That shut me up, but it didn’t quiet my suspicions. I led her silently to my apartment, fixed her a Coke while I had a rum and tonic, and took her to the little ledge that serves as my back porch. Mr. Contreras waved at us from his tomatoes, but stayed below. The dog came up to join the party.

After she’d fondled Peppy’s ears and drunk her soda, Caroline took a deep breath and said, “Vic, I really am sorry I ran out on you last winter, and—and avoided you afterward. Somehow—somehow it’s only since Louisa died that I could see it from your viewpoint. See that you weren’t making fun of me.”

“Making fun of you!” I was astonished.

She turned crimson again. “I thought, you see, you had such a wonderful father. I loved your dad so much, I wanted him to be my father too. I used to lie in bed and imagine it, imagine how much fun we’d have when we were all together as a family, him and me and Ma and Gabriella. And you’d be my real sister, so you wouldn’t feel pissed off at having to look after me.”

It was my turn to be embarrassed. I tried muttering something and finally said, “No eleven-year-old wants to be saddled with looking after a baby. I expect if you’d really been my sister, I would have been more annoyed instead of less. But I wasn’t laughing at you for having a—a different father than mine. It never once crossed my mind.”

“I know that now,” she said. “It just took me a long time to figure it out. It was me that felt humiliated at the idea of Art Jurshak being—well, doing that to Ma. You know. Then when she died I suddenly saw what it must have been like for her. And it made me realize what a remarkable woman she was, because she was such a good mother, she was so lively, and really loved life and everything. And it would have been so easy for her to be angry and bitter and take it out on me.”

She looked at me earnestly. “Then last week I went—went to see young Art. My brother, I guess he is. He was pretty good about it, even though I could see it was just hell for him. Having to talk to me, I mean. It was awful for him growing up. Art wasn’t any kind of father. He only got married to keep the Djiaks from spoiling his political career, and after young Art was born he moved into the spare bedroom. He never wanted to have anything to do with his own son. So in a crazy kind of way I can see I was better off. You know, just with Ma. Even if—even if he hadn’t been her uncle, it would have been so much worse living with him than it was growing up without a father.”

My throat was a little tight. “I’ve been full of self-recriminations these last four months, thinking I made the colossal mistake of an egomaniac in keeping on the case when you asked me to quit. And then in telling you about him.”