“Do you think you can tell me about Louisa now?” I asked when she’d turned down a second cup.

“How did you find out?” Her eyes were lifeless, her voice little more than a tired thread.

“Your brother’s son came to visit me this afternoon. Each time I’ve seen him I thought he looked familiar, but I put it down to years of looking at Art on posters or TV. But today Caroline was with me. She and I were in the middle of an argument. Young Art walked in with his face flushed, all agitated, and suddenly I realized how much he resembled Caroline. They might almost be twins, you know—I just hadn’t connected them before because I wasn’t expecting it. Of course he’s got that unearthly beauty and she’s always so disheveled, it wasn’t until they were both upset at the same time that you could really see it.”

She listened to my explanation with her face screwed up painfully, as if I were lecturing in Latin and she was trying to make me think she could follow me. When she didn’t say anything I prodded her a little.

“Why did you throw Louisa out of the house when she got pregnant?”

She looked at me directly then, some mix of fear and disgust on her face. “Keep her in the house? With that shame for all the world to know about?”

“It wasn’t her shame. It was Art’s, your brother’s. How can you even compare the two?”

“She wouldn’t have gotten—gotten in trouble if she hadn’t led him on. She saw how much he liked her to dance for him and kiss him. He—he had a weakness. She should have kept away from him.”

My nausea was so acute, it took all my will not to jump on her physically, to slam her body into the debris under the table. “If you knew he had a weakness for little girls, why the hell did you let him near your daughters?”

“He—he said he wouldn’t do it again. After I saw him—playing with—with Connie when she was five, I told him I would tell Ed about it if he ever did it again. He promised. He was afraid of Ed. But Louisa was too much for him, she was too evil-minded, she led him on against his own strength. When we saw she was going to have a baby, she told us how it happened and Art explained it to us, how she led him on against his own strength.”

“So you threw her out into the world. If it hadn’t been for Gabriella, who knows what would have happened to her? The two of you—what a couple of sanctimonious righteous bastards you are.”

She took my insults unflinchingly. She couldn’t understand why I would be angry over such logical parental behavior, but she’d seen me beat up her husband. She wasn’t going to risk exciting me.

“Was Art already married then?” I asked abruptly.

“No. We told him he was going to have to find a wife, start a family, or we’d have to tell Father Stepanek, tell the priest, about Louisa. We promised we wouldn’t say anything if she moved away and he started a family.”