He stopped there. Sybil, making a scooping movement with her hand, urged him to continue. Myles turned his palms upward, as if to deliver a pastoral blessing. Nothing more to tell. He hadn’t confirmed the rumors or denied them; his inquiries had been cut short by his infirmities.

“But cruelty, you said. On their own kind, you said. So Cyrus, maybe …”

“I wouldn’t want you to get like Allyson. I wouldn’t want you to hate our family.”

The darkness from the sea had come ashore now, dragging a thin fog with it. He motioned to her to turn on the lights, which she did. The wall sconces’ faint, counterfeit flames deepened the shadows in his sockets, the hollows in his cheeks, and she seemed to see a blurred image of his skull, as in an X-ray negative, when she sat down again.

“Myles, are you saying that there’s something in the story that might give me a reason to?”

Again, with a hunch of his shoulders, he struck the pose of the crouched heron.

“Wouldn’t know. This is the first I heard of it. Thought I indicated that earlier.”

“You’re sure?”

“You questioning my honesty or my memory?”

“Neither,” she answered, embarrassment warming her cheeks. “It’s just that you didn’t act like it was the first time you heard it.”

“And how the hell was I supposed to act?”

“Curious, surprised, I guess.”

“Surprised, you guess. If you gave things a little thought, you’d realize that I’m not easily surprised by anything.” His voice rattled with cold contempt, and she remembered something Allyson had told her when they were in high school. He can make you feel so small, sometimes, like you’re worthless and stupid. “Some mildewed tale that you got from your mother, who got it from Emily Williams, who got it from who knows where and who’s been dead these past five years—it would take a lot more than that to surprise me.”

Corinne rapped on the door once, and loudly, and stuck her head inside the room to declare that dinner was ready. Myles did not acknowledge her. He stared at Sybil, seeming to take her measure; then he gestured with trembly hand at the scrapbooks and albums and genealogies, with their cracked spines and titles stamped in faded gold.

“You can start there. Good a place as any to find a lead. More stuff upstairs. And still more up at Mingulay. In the loft of the storage shed. You can look there, too. Let me know. I’ll call the caretaker, tell him to open it up for you. Cart the lot out to Arizona with you.”

“What? Myles, all this, the work you put it into it …”

“Ah! It would take twice as many years as I’ve got left to go through it all. Go ahead, cart it off with you.”