“What?” The word comes out on a breath of shock, and Leslie seems to like that.

“It was a week or so after your dad disappeared. Your mom was back up here, but she said she didn’t want to stay alone at Avril Island, so my mother said she could stay here with her. Your mom went out one evening and was gone for hours, and when she got back, she refused to tell my mother what exactly she’d been doing all that time, just said she was taking care of some last-minute things at Avril island. The weird part was that she asked my mother to tell the police she was with her all evening, if they ever called.”

“And did they?”

Leslie shakes her head. “No, and good thing they didn’t, cause there’s no way my mother would have lied to the police. She was an honest woman to a fault.”

Unlike mine is the unsaid sentiment. “It’s understandable that your mother was uncomfortable with being asked to lie and didn’t want anything to do with my mother.” I don’t know why I care, but I want Leslie to know I’m not like my mother.

“It wasn’t only that,” she’s quick to say. “Before your mother left that weekend, she asked my mother if she could borrow some money. Something about being unable to access your dad’s bank accounts until she could prove he was really dead.”

A gentle tremoring begins under my skin that I think might be shock, and my breath turns shallow.

“What did I say?” Leslie asks. “You look as white as a ghost.”

“I didn’t know that she thought my father could be dead,” I’m able to explain through short breaths. “My mother always said that he just ran off. Never anything about him being dead.”

She leans forward and pushes on the hand that holds my tea. “Drink some of that. It will help.”

I force more of the chalky tea down and feel as though I might puke. “You’re right, that does help,” I lie. “So, did your mother end up lending my mother that money?”

“You sure you want me to go on?” she asks. I nod, and she dives right back in. “She wrote her a check for fifty thousand dollars. Your family had money, so she was sure she’d get it back. And she said she just wanted April to leave that weekend. She felt like she was already mixed up in something she didn’t want to be.”

“”She wrote her a check for fifty thousand?” I repeat in disbelief.