She went on. “With people like her, though, it’s never enough. She got greedy. When she found out my father was dying, that’s when she really turned the screw. Told him she’d go public, claim half of everything he left behind. Ruin his name and make life hell for his family unless he wrote her a check for a million dollars. A million dollars! Eleanor Lavelle wasn’t even worth ten bucks.

“Now, if there’s something I really hate, Jessica, it’s filthy whores who spread their legs and wreck families just to get their grubby hands on cash instead of going out and earning it decently and honestly like the rest of us.”

Jessica’s eyelids felt heavy, like each eyelash had a tiny weight attached to the end of it. “From what I’ve seen,” she said, “all you’ve done is spend your daddy’s cash to make a success of yourself. You’re no better than Eleanor.”

“I’m nothing like her,” Catherine said. “Do you want to know how I found out about them? While my father was hooked up to tubes and machines in the hospital, just after the best doctors in California had broken the news to my mother and I that there was no hope for him. That’s how I found out. How do you think that made me feel?

“When my father asked to speak to me in private, without my mother present, when he beckoned me close to him and used what strength he had left to pull the oxygen mask aside, I thought he was going to tell me he loved me, that he was proud of me. Instead, he told me about Eleanor Lavelle. How they’d met in some grubby strip bar, the paid-for trysts, how she’d quickly gone from prostitute to mistress. Then, he told me about you. And he told me to handle the problem. So I did.”

“You got this Nate guy to kill my mother?”

Catherine looked confused. “Nate? He was barely out of diapers twenty-five years ago. In any case, if you want a job done well, do it yourself. Don’t bother sending a man to do it.”

“It was you.” Jessica shook her head. “I can’t believe I thought my father killed my mother.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Jessica,” Catherine scoffed. “I thought you were supposed to be smart? Our father couldn’t even make it to the bathroom on his own, never mind kill anyone.”

“I was talking about the man who raised me. Tony Shaw. Rob Young. The man who was my father in every way that mattered.”