“God. How can you expect me to accept all that? To believe she’s capable of that?” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I grew up with her. I’ve known you less than a week, and you expect me to accept this horror story, this vileness as fact?”

“I think you believe it,” he said after a moment. “I think, under it all, you’re smart enough, and let’s say observant enough to know the truth.”

She was terrified. “If it is the truth, why didn’t the authorities do anything? Why wasn’t he helped?”

“Sybill, have you lived on that smooth plateau so long that you really don’t know what life’s like on the street? How many Seths there are out there? The system works some of the time, for the few and the lucky. It didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for Seth. Ray and Stella Quinn worked for me. And just under a year ago, my father paid your sister the first installment on a ten-year-old boy. He brought Seth home, he gave him a life, a decent one.”

“She said—she said he took Seth.”

“Yeah, he took him. Ten thousand the first time, a couple of other payments of about the same. Then last March she wrote him a letter demanding a lump-sum payment. A hundred fifty thousand, cash, and she’d walk away.”

“A hundred and—” Appalled, she broke off, struggled to concentrate on verifiable facts. “She wrote a letter?”

“I’ve read it. It was in the car with my father when he was killed. He was on his way back from Baltimore. He’d cleaned out most of his bank accounts. I’d have to guess she’s gone through a big chunk of it by now. She wrote us, demanding more money, just a few months ago.”

She turned away, walked quickly to the terrace doors, and flung them open. The need for air was urgent, and she gulped it in like water. “I’m supposed to accept that Gloria has done all of this, and her primary motive is money?”

“You sent her money for her lawyer. What’s his name? Why hasn’t our lawyer been contacted by him?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. It wouldn’t help to feel betrayed, she reminded herself. “She evaded the question when I asked her. Obviously, she doesn’t have a lawyer, and it’s doubtful she ever intended to consult one.”

“Well, you’re slow”—the sarcasm rang clearly—“but you do catch on.”

“I wanted to believe her. We were never close as children, and that has to be as much my fault as hers. I’d hoped I could help her, and Seth. I thought this was the way.”

“So, she played you.”

“I felt responsible. My mother is so unbending on this. She’s angry that I came here. She has refused to acknowledge Gloria since she ran off at eighteen. Gloria claimed to have been molested by the counselor at our school. She was always claiming to have been molested. They had a terrible row, my mother and she, and Gloria was gone the next day. She’d taken some of my mother’s jewelry, my father’s coin collection, some cash. I didn’t hear from her for nearly five years. Those five years were a relief.