33

A Family Affair

I could hear Mrs. Djiak’s hurried footsteps after I rang the bell. She opened the door, drying her hands on her apron.

“Victoria!” She was horrified. “What are you doing here this late at night? I begged you not to come back again. Mr. Djiak will be furious if he knows you’re here.”

Ed Djiak’s nasal baritone wafted down the hallway, demanding of his wife who was at the door.

“Just—just one of the neighbor children, Ed,” she called back breathlessly. To me she said in a hurried undervoice, “Now go quickly, before he sees you.”

I shook my head. “I’m coming in, Mrs. Djiak. We’re going to talk, all three of us, about the man who got Louisa pregnant.”

Her eyes dilated in her strained face. She grabbed beseechingly at my arm, but I was too angry to feel any compassion for her. I shook her hand from me. Ignoring her piteous cries, I brushed past her into the house and down the hall. I didn’t take my boots off—not to add a deliberate insult to her distress, but because I wanted to be able to leave quickly if I had to.

Ed Djiak was sitting at the table in the immaculate kitchen, a little black-and-white TV in front of him, a beer mug in his hand. He didn’t look up immediately, assuming it was just his wife, but when he saw me his long dark face turned a deep umber.

“You have no business in this house, young woman.”

“I wish I could agree with you,” I said, pulling a chair back from the table to face him. “It nauseates me to be here and I won’t prolong the visit. I just want to talk about Mrs. Djiak’s brother.”

“She doesn’t have a brother,” he said harshly.

“Don’t pretend Art Jurshak isn’t her brother. I don’t think we’d have too much trouble finding Mrs. Djiak’s maiden name—I’d have to wait until Monday, when I could go down to City Hall and check your marriage license, but I expect it’ll say Martha Jurshak. Then I could get copies of Art’s and her birth certificates and that’d probably clinch the matter.”

The umber in his face deepened to mahogany. He turned to his wife. “You damned talkative bitch! Who have you been telling our private affairs to?”

“No one, Ed. Really. I haven’t said a word to anyone. Not once in all these years. Not even to Father Stepanek, when I begged you—”

He cut her off with a slice of his hand. “Who’s been talking to you, Victoria? Who’s been spreading slander about my family?”

“Slander implies false report,” I responded insolently. “Everything you’ve said since I came into this house confirms that it’s true.”

“That what’s true?” he demanded, recovering himself with a strong effort. “That my wife’s maiden name was Jurshak? What if it was?”

“Just this. That her brother Art got your daughter Louisa pregnant. You told me he wasn’t very strong, Martha. Did he have a history of liking little girls?”