“We know you don’t have a copy of White Fox,” I say, my eyes boring holes into her copy of The Prince. “It would’ve been splashed across the internet if you did.”

“Of course I don’t have a copy,” she replies sharply. “No one does. Isn’t that right? But your mother and I did collaborate on the development of White Fox. I was going to play the gray-haired woman in the film. Until I saw the initial drivel she came up with, and refused.”

Tai stiffens almost imperceptibly as I smother my surprise.

Daria smiles, all pointy teeth, absorbing our discomfort with barely contained glee. “Girls, I’ll tell you something now that I haven’t told a soul: I did more than help her write White Fox.” She stubs out the cigarette nub with slow, practiced jabs. “I tried to stop your mother from finishing it.”

My heart lurches as Tai says: “Excuse me?”

But Daria adds nothing—she rises, instead, and putters around the kitchen, opening a drawer and rummaging inside. I can feel Tai shaking as we both keep quiet and wait for her to answer.

Daria nudges open a closet door, and there, on the floor, sits a giant red crocodile bag, worn to bits. Just like Mama’s, but larger, comically stretched, yawning wide.

I’m overwhelmed, then, by the feeling that Daria’s not the furrier, nor even the predatory cat itself; she’s just a poisonous spider, all alone at the center of her threadbare web.

She reaches inside and plucks out a crushed carton of cigarettes. She opens the package, fingers hovering over the neat rows of smokes until she selects one. She taps it out, carefully, relishing the building silence.

“I adore your mother, I really do,” she says, lighting her cigarette, “but the woman cannot string together a piece of writing to save her life. It’s as if disparate threads of a hundred glorious stories exist in her mind at the same time, replaying themselves in perpetuity. She always brought me bits of far-fetched stories she hoped to weave into something greater, because she couldn’t do the weaving herself. I listened dutifully, of course.” She pauses, smiles with teeth. “Enraptured, as expected.” She takes a drag.

“Once,” she says, cigarette extended as she counts on a finger, “in Chongqing, a woman saves an eight-year-old who falls into a tiger’s pen. Another time, in Accra”—another finger—“a woman helps a group of widows who gave their life savings to support a crook calling himself Prince Kwami.”

She smirks as my breath stops, hearing her count off two of my childhood legends like they’re garish things to be ashamed of.

“Then there was Nepal, Bangalore, Kamchatka. I almost said to her, ‘Mireille, darling, are we just stringing together random acts of your own bravery or kindness that the tabloids missed? Are we so desperate for attention?’”