Mebane turned then, his mouth a pale working wretched line, his eyes a scrim of inflamed veins as he hitched his body sideways to face Foster. He said, “You’re not listening. Everything I’ve been trying to tell you is how we can find it in ourselves to let things exist or not. Of course she was my sister. And I knew that but did not admit it. The same way my father did not admit it, either about the girl that was his daughter or the girl’s mother that was his own sister. Anymore than my own mother would admit what she walked around in between each and every day. And all of that, all that just the small version under our own roof, but a piece of what all things were made up of. Can’t you understand that?”

Foster said, “Even if she hadn’t of been your sister—” And stopped.

“Don’t you rebuke me. You, out rolling around with that girl. Your own cousin. However distant you want to make it that fact remains. You see, you think it’s so far it can’t be traced, that it can’t touch you. It’s what we all do—we find a way to allow what we want but should not. It’s not so different, is it?”

Foster lifted up his glass and let whiskey onto his tongue and set it down and said, “I never asked her to do anything she didn’t want to do.”

Mebane was quiet then a time. Looked away from Foster, not off into the shadows of the room but down at the blotter before him. He closed his eyes and sat motionless. After a while Foster began to think he’d gone to sleep. He had the urge to rise and walk through the rest of the house. Through all the rooms, opening all the doors, cupboards and closets, all of it. Feeling someway he had that right. Even feeling Mebane would maybe expect it of him. But did not move. He did not want to see the preserved unused rooms he knew lay down the hall and up the stairs. Did not want to see the rank or spare room where Mebane slept. Or the furniture, the ornaments, the pictures, the spent detritus of the lives before of this house. He wanted none of it. He felt up on tiptoes, poised, on view only to himself; he felt he was stronger for disregarding everything else and staying right where he was. He felt he could tear the house down with his bare hands and knew he would only walk away from it and leave it behind him. As a man walks, he thought.