“Guess I felt I owed him that much. Maybe I felt Hetty was better off without me.” She shrugged. “It’s all ancient history.”

But it wasn’t. Sins of the past were responsible for sins of the present. Decker said, “Did you try to keep in contact with Hetty at all?”

Lita shook her head. “No husband, no child…I got what I wanted…a clean break.”

“How old was Hetty when you walked out of her life?”

“When he took her, you mean. She was five. I insisted that he wait till she had her fifth birthday. I made her a pretty dress that I wanted to see her in. I took a picture of her in that dress. I wanted something to remember her by.”

“Is that how Marie found out she had a half-sister? By the picture?”

“They don’t call you detective for nothing.”

“How old was Marie when she found out?”

“Sixteen. She used it against me. Said she was the kind of person she was because I was the kind of person I was. She was wild because she liked the boys. But you know kids. They use one excuse or another to crucify their parents.”

“Did she go to Berkeley to be near Hetty?”

“To be near Hetty, to be near the hippies, to be near the drugs, to be near the sex and the communes. Of course, Marie told me she was going to find the mother she never had.”

Lita laughed softly.

“So right away she messes things up—carrying on with her own half-sister’s husband.” She closed her eyes. “I felt bad for Hetty. Really, I did. First I go ahead and mess her up. Then her sister goes ahead and messes her up. She was always kind of a fragile kid. I heard later she had a breakdown—her and the kid. Hetty had a kid—a daughter, I think. She was little when it all happened. That’s what got to Marie more than anything. That the kid suffered. That’s when she started looking to Jesus. I told her, don’t put the blame on me for this one. I may have screwed up in my life. But I never fucked any of my sisters’ husbands.”

There was a long, reflective moment of silence. Lita was back in another world. And Decker thought about this one.

No wonder Marie took Tandy under her wing when they met up again as adults. Marie looked upon their relationship as a second chance. An opportunity to cleanse the soul.

The prodigal daughter.