“Yes, we have,” said the redhead, and the brunette nodded.

“It’s sick, it’s so sick,” I muttered.

“Sick, is it? What would you know about it? When I was fifteen, three boys raped me behind a church. They were your kind and I was just a Mattison, so you can guess who would be believed and who wouldn’t. I told my mother and father. My mother looked down her nose at me and prayed at the same time. But my father did something about it. He took me into his bed and showed me it didn’t have to be that way. And my brothers showed me too.”

“Please, no more.” I slumped against Gloria.

“Too indelicate for you? Let me tell you something. This family has something you and Frank never had and never will have. There are no secrets between us. We take care of our own, we protect each other.”

“The way you protected your daughter?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “I protected her well until Frank polluted her mind with his filthy talk and drove her crazy. She was loved. My father loved her, Jack and Tom loved her, I loved her. How do you think the rest of the world would have treated her? I’ll tell you how—they would have turned her over to social services and stuck her in a home run by the state. All my mother could do was pray for her.” She grinned. “Those who can’t do, teach—or pray. I don’t teach or pray. I run a business and we all share in it. No one in this family has to go outside to make a living. And we all make a very good living. I’ve taken care of that.” She took a long swallow of her drink.

“Who does he belong to?” I asked, pointing at Virgil.

“I gave birth to him,” said the brunette, “but he belongs to all of us.”

“If your husband is Jack, that makes Virgil Regina’s cousin,” I said.

“Who her husband is has nothing to do with it,” said Vivian.

“What do you mean?”

“Virgil might be Jack’s. Or Tom’s. Or even Leo’s.”

“Oh, Christ!” Gloria whispered.

“There’s no ownership in this family,” said Vivian.

“What do you call it, then?” I said. “The way you’ve got them all under your thumb?”

“No one’s under anyone’s thumb. If anyone wants to leave, they’re perfectly free to do it.”

“And then a few years later you go after their children.”

“Only in Frank’s case. He owes me something. He took my daughter away and he took himself away. If he’d stayed, I could have forgiven him for what he did to Regina. Or maybe if I’d had another child. But I couldn’t. Cancer took care of that. So my only contribution to this family is my granddaughter, and I want her.”

“You’ll never get her,” I said.