"Up the hill under a stone. He killed himself in 1979. She's still alive, I think, his crazy wife, but she's long gone. I haven't seen her in twenty years. She left Malachi here one day for his summer vacation and she never came back for him. Last I heard she joined some crazy cult church out west, but I couldn't tell you if that was right or not. It wouldn't surprise me, anyway. "
I tapped my knuckle against the picture frame, working up the fortitude to face Eliza without wanting to punch her. "So he's dead. "
"Thoroughly. "
"And Malachi is my half brother. "
"Yep. "
"As well as, somehow, my cousin. I mean, since you're my aunt, with a couple of 'greats' tacked on. And Avery was my grandfather. And he was your half brother. That definitely makes him a cousin too. This is . . . damn. This is messed up. " For one nasty second I remembered and cringed from a moment of grade school shame.
"Well, it's complicated, yes—but when you say it that way it sounds strange. "
"It is strange," I insisted, and I felt dumb for feeling like I needed to do so.
"Not so much. " She retrieved the photo from my hand and put it back on the bookcase. "Modern families are complicated things. Siblings, half siblings, stepparents, stepcousins, what have you. You can't pick who you're born to, that's for sure. I'm fortunate that way; I'm a legitimate Dufresne, the name is mine by right. I didn't have to steal it from anyone. "
I was suddenly defensive. "No one in my family calls herself a Dufresne anymore—or hell, no one ever did, that I know of. "
She looked like she wanted to argue with me, but after thinking about it for a second, she didn't. "And thank the Lord for it," she said, still gazing at the picture. "What name did you end up taking? I can't recall. "
"Moore. My mother's. "
"You mean your grandmother's married name. "
"Whichever. " It then occurred to me that it wasn't my immediate family she had in mind. Since she'd done her best to provoke me, I decided to return the favor, or at least to try. "Your half brother was the son of a slave, and he took the Dufresne name, didn't he? Otherwise you wouldn't be worried about anyone in my line having it. "
She wheeled around, face brimming with hatred, but her words were mostly level. "My family never kept any slaves, girl. If you knew more about your own birthplace you'd know that. Nobody around there kept slaves. An' Avery, he had no right—the name wasn't his. My father tried to be kind, and you see what it got him? You see what it got me?A line of illiterate, money-grubbing, mixed-breed cousins who feel entitled to everything that's mine. And here you come, into my own house. Into my own house through the front door, goddammit. I thought you might be different. I thought I saw in you . . . " She stopped, teetering at the edge of saying more but resisting, regaining her balance.
"What?" I pushed. "What did you think you saw?"
"Someone else. "
I was about to lose her if I wasn't careful. "Tatie . . . "
"Don't you call me that. Don't you call me that, ever. "
Perhaps a hasty subject change would distract her enough to calm her down. I needed to nudge her attention in some other direction; I needed to remind her of someone else she hated so she could forget how much she despised me. Given Eliza's nature, I figured just about anyone could serve that purpose.
"Why did you pay to send Leslie to Pine Breeze?" I asked, throwing my mother in front of her, giving her someone else to be angry at. "If you wanted her out of your hair there were cheaper places she could have gone to have a baby in secret. "
It worked, at least a little. She shrugged one bony shoulder and scanned the room for something. "That's where she wanted to go. " Her eyes settled on what was left of her drink.
"What damn did you give?"
She ignored me for a second, returning to the bar and to her glass. Eliza reached under the counter and pulled out the bottle of gin. She dumped it straight over the remaining ice and took a hearty gulp. "I didn't give any damn, and that's the truth. I went along with it because of Arthur—and because I couldn't stand the sight of his wife, who hated your mother so much. It was worth paying to keep Leslie out of Rachel's reach just to keep her angry. "
"You're not really so vindictive. "
"Oh, the hell I'm not. " Tatie lifted the glass to her lips again, killing nearly half the drink. Her crinkled eyes slipped sideways, peeking at the door. "I wonder when he'll get here," she murmured.
"Who?" I asked, then I recognized what a silly question that was, so I answered it myself. "Malachi?"
"Well, yes, Malachi. The police are right. He's got nowhere else to go. He'll come here in his own time. And when he does, I'll be sure and tell him he just missed you. "
"You know they're waiting for him right outside? They're parked out in the trees. They'll catch him if he comes here. "
Eliza's confidence was disconcerting. It made me wary, and it made me think