“There’s no malaria in the foothills of the Magaliesberg mountains. You know that.”

“You can’t be too careful.” I add an extra tot of gin for good measure.

“It’s the quinine in the tonic that’s the mosquito deterrent, anyway. Not the gin.”

“Oh well, it’s not like I can take the gin out now, can I? Ma could say what she liked about the Brits, but they brought G and Ts to Africa, so they couldn’t have been all that bad. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“Yes.”

“Suit yourself,” I say, and then mutter under my breath, “Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

Dee’s attack comes seemingly out of nowhere. I thought we were bantering but clearly not. My sister is as sensitive as she ever was. “Why are you here, Ruth? Another failed marriage or are you recovering from the most recent round of plastic surgery?”

I won’t let her get away with that. “Why are you here, Dee? Wait, don’t tell me. There’s someone who really needs you in Zaire or Rwanda or fucking Timbuktu, and so you thought you’d leave because isn’t that what you’ve always done best?”

Dee flinches but doesn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve retired, actually.”

“Retired? Well, I hope you don’t expect to stay here.”

“Why not? It’s as much my home as it is yours.”

That’s what she thinks. “I’m selling it.”

“What?”

“That’s why I’m here. We’ve had an offer on the farm that I’m in the process of accepting.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Oh, but I can. You signed over your power of attorney to me decades ago, remember? When you left me alone to deal with everything by myself, all that pesky paperwork included?” I hate that I sound hurt. To hell with her.

“I’ll rescind the power of attorney. You can’t sell the farm.”

“We’ll just have to see about that,” I say, taking my drink and sweeping out of the room, cigarette smoke and my silk kimono trailing behind me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Delilah

28 April 1994

Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

There wasn’t a time that I could recall being free of Ruth’s torment.

With her being older than me by ten months but born in the same year, we were considered “Irish twins,” though no one ever called us that in front of our Scottish father, Angus. Their restraint may have been because he had an unpredictable mean streak, or it could’ve been because they simply didn’t know the term. Our town was a small farming community populated mainly by Afrikaners who were suspicious of anyone who was an outsider or read anything other than farming periodicals and the Bible.