Marge took out her notebook and smiled again. If Leek was scamming her, Marge would find out. But there was something unreal about Lita’s confession. Maybe it was the ease with which she had revealed her secret. She’d opened up only minutes after meeting Marge. Most likely, she’d mentioned it to others as well. The whole thing was probably wishful thinking.

“Mind if we talk a little about Marie?”

“Where is my daughter, anyway?”

“We’re not sure, Mrs. Bellson.”

“Call me Lita! I hate anything with a Mrs. in front of it.”

“Okay, Lita.” Marge took out a notebook. “Do you consider yourself close to Marie?”

“Close?”

“Yes, close.”

“You don’t know Marie at all, do ya?”

“No, I don’t.”

“’Cause if you did, you’d know one thing right away. I was a real shitty mother to Marie. I mean real shitty. I left her father when Marie was just a babe in arms. It was only me and her. I was older when I had Marie. My parents were so disgusted with me by that time—disgusted I divorced my first husband, Henry, and disgusted that an unmarried woman of my age was pregnant. I took the father’s name just to match Marie, but I never married the jerk. He wanted to, I didn’t. Case closed. A stubborn lot, us Whitson gals. Mules—every one of us.”

“You were estranged from your parents?”

“Estranged? More like we hated each other. S’right. It never bothered me much. But it bothered the hell out of Marie. Guess she wanted grandparents like all the other little girls in school. Guess she would have liked a daddy, too. Too bad. I tried my best, but I had a life to live. Sorry, but I just wasn’t the martyr type.” Lita frowned. “Where the hell’s my ice cream? What are they doing, milking the cows?”

“I’m sure it will be here soon.” Marge brushed hair out of her eyes. “What kind of child was Marie?”

“A Whitson—meaning stubborn and wild. Whitson females are only made out of one mold.”

“That’s funny. People who know Marie haven’t described her as wild.”

“That’s ’cause they didn’t know her in her younger days. The girl was a jalapeño pepper—full of heat and fire. Now all the fire’s for nursing and God. She’s about as interesting as a bowl of oatmeal.”

Marge thought about a different Marie—the radical one buried in a storage bin over her parking space.

“But not so when Marie was young?”

“Not so at all.”

“She got pregnant very young, didn’t she?”

“You might say that.”

“Was she married?”

“Never married any of them.”

“Any of them?”

“Nope, not a one.”

Marge paused. “How many pregnancies are we talking about?”

Lita narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know if Marie would want us talking about her personal life.”