She hung her head over the porch railing. “Oh, it's so complicated.”
“Hey, I'm the illegitimate kid. I'm the personification of complicated.”
It garnered a tense laugh from her. “You know Lolly took me in when my mother died.” She made no reference to her father.
“Yes.”
“Well”-Deborah ran a hand through her thick, dark hair and seemed to cast about for the right words-”that wasn't my decision. Had I my druthers, I'd have gone to live with Uncle Mutt. I've adored him since I was little. But he didn't want a child underfoot then; he was the fast and easy bachelor. So Uncle Mutt, in his grand role as patriarch, dispatched me to live with Aunt Lolly. It was kind of an arranged marriage, y'know? Neither of us were very thrilled.”
I thought about how badly Gretchen wanted a child. “Bob Don and Gretchen didn't offer to take you in?”
“No. Aunt Gretchen was… still drinking.” Deborah shook her head. “She wouldn't have wanted kids anyway.”
The child of her ex-husband. I could understand why. Gretchen, Bob Don, his brother Paul-untangling that web would take time if I relied on Gretchen and Bob Don to speak up.
“Why was Lolly not a good match for you?”
“Because family propriety matters so to Lolly-perhaps more than it should.” She still referred to her aunt in present tense and I wasn't heartless enough to correct her. “Brian and I weren't anything more than stains on the Goertz name to her.”
“Brian?” I asked.
Her jaw worked for a moment, reining in strong emotion. “My brother. My little brother. He's dead, too.”
“Oh, Deborah, I'm so sorry.”
Her eyes filmed with tears, but she quickly blinked them away. “You'd have liked him real well, Jordan.”
“I'm so sorry,” I repeated. I make for a lousy comforter.
“Don't listen to the lies they tell,” she stormed with sudden fury. “Because they do lie.”
“Who's they?”
“This whole goddamned family.” Anger reddened her face and she grasped my hand, her trimmed nails digging furrows in my skin. “They'll tell you my dad murdered my mother and then went off and killed himself. But he didn't. He didn't.”
I took both her hands in mine. Her skin quivered against my touch. I saw now she was too mad to cry. Fury contorted her face into a vengeful grimace.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? What's the truth?”
She didn't look at me; she stared back out at the lapping bay as she talked. “My mother-when I was just six, and Brian was only two-was found shot to death. In my father's studio. Her face had been blown off.” She stifled a shudder. “My father went missing. Later we-I mean Uncle Mutt-found a note that my father had left. He said he'd shot my mother, then snuck out here to Sangre Island and walked into the ocean. He said he was sorry for what he'd done and couldn't live with himself anymore.”
“Uncle Mutt found this note?”
She nodded. “It was taped to the door of the house. The family had gathered here for my mother's funeral. He left the note-and then vanished.”
“And you don't believe your father killed your mother?” I didn't mean for the question to sound so heartless, and I squeezed Deborah's hands in support.
“Would you?” She looked at me with tearless eyes. “My father was an art teacher, Jordan. A sculptor. He worshiped my mother's face. She met him when she was one of his regular models. Sculptors don't destroy works of art. If he was going to kill her, it wouldn't be shooting her in the face.”
Her reasoning seemed wishful to me. Why should an artist lurk on a higher moral plane? And I'd known painters who'd obliterated canvases with no hesitation. But to contradict her would be cruel. “I take it the rest of your family didn't agree with your reasoning.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “Do you know how that feels? They didn't want to talk about it. They didn't want to acknowledge that something as distasteful as a murder had happened in our family. Tight asses, all of them. But Bob Don was kind to me, and Tom-he was really kind to Brian. Aubrey was good to him, too.” She paused to draw a restoring breath. “The Goertzes personify the delightful combination of German immigrant stiffness and Old South propriety. You just don't have murderers in the family. It's simply not done. So everyone closed together in a tight circle and pretended it didn't happen. They pretended my parents didn't matter because they died in a distasteful way.” Bitterness scored her words. I couldn't speak; I watched her bottom lip quiver with anger.
She continued: “Aunt Lolly considered Brian and me as nothing but pockmarks on the family skin. She had a warped sense of family honor. What Dad did-what she thought he did-was unforgivable. And Lolly definitely believed that the children were liable for the sins of the father.”
“Was she just horrible to you and Brian?” I asked.
Deborah shrugged. “She never laid a hand on either of us. But everything we did was wrong, a further embarrassment to the family name. As if Brian and I were defective, being the children of 'a woman who let herself get killed and a man too cowardly to face up to what he did.' “ Her voice mimicked Lolly's sugary tone. “Those are her words, not mine.”
I thought of the sick mind that could punish children for an unproven act of a parent. I could imagine her hating me now, with precise clarity-the end result being a vicious cycle of mail sent my way. Don't punish the wayward bachelor. Punish his wayward sperm instead. Make the bastard pay for the crimes of the sire. Acrid dislike for Lolly surged in me. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment of me? Or poor Deborah?
Had she treated others the way she'd treated the two of us? The sharp edge of her hate might have turned back on her. I saw her gasping, purpling face again and, coldly, could not muster much pity for her. I did not feel like an honorable man at that moment.
“The police accepted this suicide note?” I ventured.
“Yes. But Dad's body was never recovered, there was never a sense of closure.” She laughed, and it was a sickly, ragged sound. “Brian used to be sure that our father was alive somewhere, working to clear his name. Like The Fugitive.” She glanced out again toward the bay that had swallowed her father.
“If it wasn't your dad-who would have had a motive to kill your mother?”
Her mouth worked, as though restraining unbidden words from speech. “I don't know. Her name was Nora. Did you know that? You had an Aunt Nora.”
I shook my head. “It's a lovely name.”
Her mouth tightened. “I know my dad wasn't a murderer. Please don't listen to the others. They're wrong, wrong as can be.” She fostered a weak smile. “Your uncle Paul was a good man. I think you and he would have liked each other real well.” The pain of her loss was nearly tangible; I could imagine her reaching out and giving her sadness a loving stroke.
“I'm sure we would have.” I smiled back at her. A sudden thickness sat in my chest. “I wish you could have known my dad. And my mom, before she got Alzheimer's.”
“But you've got another dad now. Lucky boy,” she murmured.
“I guess. Yes,” I managed to say. She saw the doubt in my eyes.
“Oh, don't feel funny about it. Count yourself blessed. If Lolly could have been another mother to me after I lost mine-I would have given anything to have a relationship like that. I needed a mom, and a dad. You've got a second chance, Jordan. Bob Don's the kindest man I know. He was so good to me after my folks died…”
“You sound like Candace,” I cajoled, trying to lighten the gloom that had enveloped us both.
“I assume you and Candace mended fences,” Deborah offered after a long silence.
“Yes, we did. We try not to stay mad at each other.”
“Look, I've had so little luck in my life I always spot it in others. Know that you're fortunate. I like Candace. She's got a spark to her.” Deborah's voice was small.
“She's a pistol,” I agreed.
“She's lucky, too. Good-looking fellow like you.” I felt the easy weight of her arm against mine.
I didn't blink and kept my eyes firmly focused on the crashing foam. Thoughts of Greek tragedy and four- fingered babies flashed through my mind and I admit to wondering, for the briefest of moments, exactly what the incest laws of Texas were. Not that I was about to wade into my own gene pool.
