“Sorry,” I responded, pinned to the spot where I stood. “You okay?” I asked.

Her eyes stayed shut so she could lie to me without looking at me. “I’m fine.”

I’d have been a fool to let it go at that. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Your grandmother’s dead. Last night. A stroke, they’re thinking.”

Lulu and her mother hadn’t spoken since Lulu had moved out of the house almost twelve years before. I couldn’t recall having ever met the woman, though I guessed she must still live in town. That’s why it was so confounding to be presented with the sight of my beloved aunt in shambles, sprawled across her bed, pushed to this point by the death of a woman we’d not seen in so long.

“You know what the kicker is?” Lulu slurred. “You know what really makes me . . .”

She stalled. I sensed she was hunting for a word, but when she realized what the right word was, she decided not to use it. She began the thought again. “You know what really makes me mad?”

“What?”

“She’s dead now, and that means me and Shelly’s all that’s left,” she said, meaning her younger sister who now lived in Nashville. It had probably been Michelle who had called with the news.

I had an idea. I had a question.

It leaped out of my mouth with a little more glee than it should have.

“Just you two and old Tatie, eh?”

Lulu sat up fast, eyes blazing as though she were looking for something to hurl my way. I stepped back and braced myself against the doorframe with both hands, ready to run if I had to. Lulu settled on a bottle of cough syrup on the nightstand and chucked it drunkenly towards my head. It stumbled against the wall by my elbow, then clattered harmlessly to the floor at my feet. I held my ground.

“I didn’t mean anything by it—just to say that I guess there’s another whole branch of the family there someplace. It’s not just us, not really.” Of course I meant something by it. I meant I wanted to know more, but I wasn’t dumb enough to anger her over it if I could help myself.

She laughed without a trace of mirth and let her body fall back onto the bed. “That’s true, I guess. Lord, but wouldn’t we be better off if it wasn’t so.”

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” I broached, still clinging to the doorframe. “’Cause they sent Malachi away to Pine Breeze.”

Lulu snorted, and something told me I’d screwed up. “Who told you that?” she asked.

“But they did, didn’t they? They sent him off to Pine Breeze for the next twenty years and he’s gotta stay fifty yards away from me for the rest of forever.”

“Yeah, well. You’re part right. But he’s at the state facilities. You heard the judge say that part about the Bend, or did you forget? He’s not over there at Pine Breeze.”