“On the stroll?”

“God, where do you come from? She was hooking. This isn’t a whore with a heart of gold here, this isn’t a desperate, down-on-her-luck unwed mother doing anything she has to to survive and keep her child fed. She was keeping her habit fed.”

She only shook her head, slowly, side to side, even as part of her mind accepted everything he said. “You can’t know all this.”

“Yes, I can know it. Because I live with Seth. I’ve talked with him, I’ve listened to him.”

Her hands went icy. She lifted the pot of tea to warm them, poured some slowly into a cup. “He’s just a boy. He could have misunderstood.”

“Sure. I bet that’s it. He just misunderstood when she brought a john up to the place, when she got so stoned she sprawled on the floor and he wondered if she was dead. He just misunderstood when she beat the hell out of him when she was feeling testy.”

“She hit him.” The cup rattled into the saucer. “She hit him?”

“She beat him. No controversial yet civilized spanking, Dr. Griffin. Fists, belts, the back of the hand. Have you ever had a fist in the face?” He held his up to hers. “Figure it out. Proportionately, this would be about right, comparing a grown woman’s fist to, say, a five-, six-year-old boy. Put liquor and drugs into that fist and it comes faster and harder. I’ve been there.”

He angled his fist away, studied it. “My mother preferred smack—to the uninitiated that’s heroin. If she missed her fix, you learned to stay far out of her way. I know just what it is to have a vicious, fucked-up female take her fists to me.” His gaze whipped back to Sybill’s. “Your sister won’t ever have the chance to use them on Seth again.”

“I—she needs to go into therapy. I never . . . He was fine when I saw him. If I’d known she was abusing him—”

“I haven’t finished. He’s a good-looking kid, isn’t he? Some of Gloria’s clients thought so.”

The color that had come back to her cheeks fell away. “No.” Shaking her head, she pushed away from him and staggered to her feet. “No, I don’t believe that. That’s hideous. That’s impossible.”

“She didn’t do anything to stop it.” He ignored the pale cheeks and fragility now and pushed. Hard. “She didn’t do a goddamn thing to protect him. Seth was on his own there. He fought them off or hid. Sooner or later, there would have been one he couldn’t fight off or hide from.”

“That’s not possible. She couldn’t.”

“She could—especially if it earned her a few extra bucks. It took months with us before he could stand to be touched in even the most casual way. He has nightmares still. And if you say his mother’s name, it makes you sick to see the fear that comes into his eyes. That’s your situation, Dr. Griffin.”