“I’m a woman of many talents.” Ruth winked.

“I don’t doubt it.” We started dishing up, handing each other bowls and gravy, and remarking on how good the food looked. As we started eating, we lapsed into an awkward silence that I tried to fill by blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “Were you really a stripper?”

“Yes.” Ruth laughed, clearly taken aback by the direction the conversation was going in.

“Sorry, it’s none of my business.”

“Not at all. I’ve always preferred people who speak their minds even if what’s on their minds isn’t always appropriate or polite. At least you always know where you stand with them. So, go ahead and ask whatever you want.”

“Okay. You took your clothes off? For your profession?”

“Yes.”

“And you danced with a snake?”

“Sometimes. It was a python called Frank.”

“Frank? Frank the python?”

She shrugged. “What can I say? He looked like Frank Sinatra. Same beady eyes and womanizing tendencies.”

I laughed, feeling some of the tension from my neck ease. “You weren’t scared of it?”

“I was squeamish with it the first few times, but after you’ve had a python crap and pee on you, you come to think of it more as a baby and less as a potentially dangerous animal. The fact that it was so heavy that I had to wheel it around in a pram also helped make me think of it as a baby, though unsuspecting people who peered inside didn’t agree.”

I laughed and took another sip of the champagne, which was growing on me, before I remembered something. “I thought the law at the time prohibited stripping?”

“No, it stated that you couldn’t leave the stage with less clothes than what you came on wearing. So I had to put them back on during the act without it looking like the show was over and I was just hurriedly getting dressed.” She topped up our glasses. “Who told you all this, by the way?”

“Ma wrote me a few letters.”

“I’m sure she had a lot to say about it, though she didn’t have a problem with all the money I sent home since it helped keep the farm afloat.”

And there we were after all the levity, back at the farm, which was the biggest bone of contention between us. “I thought you’d sell the farm after Ma died,” I said.

“No,” Ruth replied. “We wouldn’t have gotten a good price for it, so I rented out the land, which paid for its upkeep. Besides, I promised Da . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing, doesn’t matter.” Ruth looked shifty but I didn’t want to press her on it. I wasn’t interested in anything to do with Da anyway.

“So you made a lot of money? From the stripping?”