A woman lay stretched out on the couch, head resting on a throw cushion and one arm flung up over her head. She was wearing a red negligee with a bodice made almost entirely of lace, which exposed, rather than covered, her large breasts. Empty wine bottles and an overflowing ashtray cluttered the table in front of her. Two candles had burned down completely, leaving puddles of wax. The woman snored softly, completely oblivious to the lights that had been switched on and the noise I’d made getting inside.

It took me longer than it should have to realize who she was.

In my defense, it had been almost four decades since I’d last laid eyes on her. And seeing her there was unexpected; the last I’d heard, she was living with her third or fourth husband in Cape Town somewhere. Rumors of other things before then had also made their way to me, but they were so outlandish that I hadn’t known if I could believe them.

“Ruth?” I whispered, not wanting to startle her. When she didn’t so much as twitch in response, I said her name louder. Still no reaction. I walked over to the couch and shook her arm, repeating her name until she finally woke up.

“Wha—?” She blinked myopically up at me and then narrowed her eyes, a look of bewilderment on her face. “Ma?” she asked stupidly.

She blinked a few times more and then struggled into a sitting position, not taking her eyes off me the entire time. Finally, my sister’s expression cleared.

“Dee? Is that you?” she asked. “My God, you look old.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ruth

27 April 1994

Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

Dee scares the bejesus out of me, looming over me looking so much like Ma that it’s like being visited by a ghost who’s been dead for more than thirty years.

Her short gray hair stands up in greasy spikes and her face, completely devoid of makeup, has streaks of either sweat or tears that have carved their way down her cheeks. She’s wrinkled and stern; it’s like being visited by an avenging angel, and I wonder if I’m having a nightmare.

“Get up and go to bed, Ruth,” she instructs, and it’s such a banal and typical-of-Dee thing to say that I know it’s not a dream.

Still, just because it’s not a dream doesn’t mean her sudden appearance isn’t an omen.

I have always believed in signs. Dee used to as well but since her signs came from the man upstairs, she didn’t view them as signs at all; rather just her listening to God telling her what to do. Sounds like most of my relationships with men, now that I come to think of it, so I really shouldn’t point any fingers. People in glass houses and all that.