“She always had plenty of spending money from him, too. He would give her a thousand at a crack. In any event, the place on the shore had been paid for with money I’d earned, and she was trying to throw me out of it. So I threw her out. I pushed her out the door. She had the money for a motel, I knew, so I figured I was free to get even more drunk than I was. I did, and passed out. It was dark when I woke up, and I expected the place to be empty, but she was asleep in the second bedroom. She knew me. She’d waited until I’d knocked myself out.”

“She crawled back, but not far enough to give you the satisfaction.”

“Whatever. I still had it in my mind that she’d tried to throw me out of a place I’d paid for. I pulled her out of bed, dragged her by the hair across the floor, opened the door, and literally kicked her butt out. She said, ‘You’ll regret this the rest of your life.’”

“How about her? Do you think she could have meant that?”

Devlin shook his head. “I didn’t see her for the next two days, but she called me at home Monday night, saying she wanted to come back. She’d already done that so many times, I’d lost count. The beginning of the last disaster. I was sick …”

“From what?”

“The booze. You really don’t know. Nothing will stop a real drunk from drinking except the threat of death itself. We were scheduled to spend the weekend of the eighteenth in Jamaica Estates.”

“The whole weekend?”

“The house was big enough. Charlotte liked to have everybody together. She’d told Maryellen that she wanted us to set an example for the boys, when they married. Everybody could be just as close as ever. I doubt—” He stopped, thinking of Jack Brennan’s letter lodged in the pedestal of the stool in the luncheonette, and its revelation of sex among brothers and sister.

“You doubt what?”