helped my husband’s grandfather, Simeon, build this house. When Mama got sick, my husband’s father offered Evangeline a job. Hilaire was a widower and knew nothing about laundry or cleaning. She needed work.”
“Ten years later you married his son.”
“David was generous, paid my support after Evangeline was gone. Visited me. His father died in 1980. He proposed. I accepted.”
“You were sixteen. He was thirty.”
“It was my only option.”
I found the answer peculiar but let it go.
“You’ve lived in this house ever since?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right here?”
Beat. “This is where I want to be.”
I started to ask how she was supporting herself. Then didn’t. I felt tight bands compressing my chest. I swallowed. Took her hand.
“I promise you, Obeline. I will do everything to discover what happened to Evangeline.”
Her face remained impassive.
I gave her my card, hugged her.
“I’ll speak with you again.”
She didn’t say good-bye as I walked away. Rounding the house, I glanced back. She was entering the gazebo, scarf tails dancing in the breeze.
Harry was waiting in the Escalade. When I got in, she smiled and patted her purse.
“You didn’t touch the rim, right?”
“Any moron with a TV knows better than that.” Harry grinned a grin that hoisted warning flags in my brain.
“What?”
“You’ll be proud of your baby sister.”
Oh no. “Tell me.”
“I also bagged the tissues.”
Pleased, and relieved, I held up a palm. Harry high-fived it. We both grinned, the Brennan sisters sleuthing again.
“What now?” she asked.
“Once back in Montreal, I’ll ship the can and tissues and a skeletal sample to an independent lab. If they can extract DNA from the bone, and compare it to Obeline’s DNA, we’ll know if the skeleton is Evangeline.”
“Why send it out?”
“Our lab doesn’t do mitochondrial DNA.”
“And I’m sure that’s important.”
“With old bone, you’re much more likely to get mitochondrial than nuclear DNA. There are more copies in each cell.”
“It’s Evangeline,” Harry said.
“The chance is one in a billion.”
“Where do you get your odds?”
“OK. I made that up. But it’s highly improbable that Evangeline’s skeleton has just, out of the blue, landed in my lab.”
“Think what you want. That little voice in my heart is telling me it’s her.”
When Harry makes one of her extraordinary leaps of imagination, it’s pointless to argue. I started to do so anyway, stopped, remembering. Sometimes, illogically, my sister is right.
I looked at my watch. Eleven-ten. Our flight was leaving at six-something.
“Head toward Moncton?” I asked.
“How ’bout lunch?”
“We just ate five pounds of pancakes each.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I thought you were worried about your spreading derriere.”
“A girl gumshoe’s gotta keep up her strength.”
“You lifted two tissues and a soda can.”
“Mental exertion.”
