“A couple of days ago Gloria and I ran into Vivian downtown.”

“Vivian!”

“Yes. I didn’t recognize her at first, but she recognized me.” Already his eyes were blazing. “We had just a short conversation and . . . Frank, why didn’t you tell me about your sister?”

“Tell you what?” His voice nearly cracked. “I told you a long time ago she was a troublemaker.”

“I’m not talking about Vivian. I’m talking about Regina.”

His head jerked up. “Regina?”

“Your sister Regina.”

“What—what did Vivian tell you?”

“More than you’ve told me. I’d like to hear something from you. I’d like to know why you’ve kept this from me.”

“She died.” He looked away at the window and said it again, whispering. “She died.”

“I know that. She killed herself in that horrible way. But I want to know why you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s an ugly story. I didn’t see the need.”

“You didn’t see the need? She was retarded, for one thing. And you named our daughter after her without my knowing it. Now I want to know why!”

“I . . . owed it to her. She was too young to die, and that way.”

“Why did she do it?”

“She was retarded—not severely, not so you could tell it at a first or second glance. I think it was worse for her that way. And she was pretty too, except for that empty look in her eyes.”

That empty look in her eyes. As soon as he said it, it hit me: the photograph I had found in his desk drawer the day I was packing everything to be moved to the trailer. His sister Regina must have been the girl in the picture—and the reason it had so conveniently disappeared in the moving.

“But,” he continued, “the kids at school were no worse to her than her own brothers and sisters. They tormented her, and the older she got, the more they piled it on. I looked after her but it didn’t do much good, because as soon as my back was turned, they were after her again.”

“Where were your parents all this time?”

His voice turned venomous. “Have you ever watched parents quietly disown a child? I saw it happen. Regina had no protection except my promise to run away with her. Finally, that was all she talked about and I kept promising and promising. Then I got that scholarship, so I told her she’d have to wait a year or two. We were sitting under the dead oak in the backyard when I tried to explain it to her, but she stood up and backed away from me. . . .”

Backed away. Like Wanda Hoople.

“There was nothing more I could say to her, so I let her go. That afternoon she took the lye from under the sink and carried it into the woods where no one would hear her scream.”

“Oh, God!”