Pine Breeze. It was all I could do to contain my excitement. For all of her promises to fill me in one day, she’d never done so. And if she wasn’t willing to volunteer any information, now might be the best time to quiz her. I sighed my next question, desperate to make it come out casually. “How come?”

“It’s been shut down for fifteen, sixteen years. Since you were born, anyway. You do the math.” One long arm reached over the side of the bed, feeling for the rum and fumbling around.

On the other side of the house, the front door opened and Dave dropped his keys onto the end table by the couch, like he always did. I ran the tip of my tongue over my upper lip and took another deep, measured breath. Lulu found the rum and took another swallow.

This was as close to vulnerable as I might ever expect to see Lulu. Now or never. I was too curious to pay any attention to the twinge of guilt that warned I was taking advantage of her. I asked my next question anyway.

“Where is Pine Breeze, anyway?”

Lulu’s eyes squinted low and close together. Uh-oh. “What do you want to know for?”

“I just do.” I slid one foot back and forth and shifted my weight. She didn’t answer me for a few long seconds, so I spoke again to fill the pause. “Just wondering.”

“I told you, it’s been shut down.”

Dave appeared beside me. “She all right?” he asked quietly, but Lulu heard him.

“Would she have called you back from Atlanta if she was all right?” she spat, not budging from her prone position except to stuff a pillow up under her head. “And now this little thing thinks she can, she thinks, she wants to know about Pine Breeze, if you can believe that . . . .”

My uncle pulled me outside the doorway and leaned close. He peeked around the corner back at Lulu, and he lowered his voice. “You got plans with friends or anything? I mean, are you going off someplace tonight?”

“Not sure. Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.”

He ignored my attitude and moved to his next query. “How bad do you want to know about Pine Breeze?”

No sense in lying. I dropped the nonchalance. “Pretty bad.”

“Okay. Stick around. But give me a minute here. Let me get her to sleep.” He nudged me farther down the hall and stepped into their bedroom, closing the door behind himself.

I stood there, baffled. It had occurred to me before that I might pump Dave for clues, but he always allied himself with Lulu, pleading ignorance or parental alliance. I wandered into the living room and flipped the television on, wondering if he was actually going to make good or if he’d only been trying to get rid of me.

Dave was a great guy, but it was a rare, rare day that he’d go against Lulu’s wishes.