LITMIR.BIZ

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Alice had obviously married sometime after that. I wanted to see what had been said about the Vidrine hippie commune, how it had petered out and how Alice had changed everything. Because like it or not—like her or not—I had to admit she’d done an amazing transformation of the place.

      Some time later the librarian—Kenyatta was her name—startled me as I hunched over a microfilm screen. “Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “But the library closes in fifteen minutes.”

      “What time is it?”

      “Quarter to six.”

      I’d been here three and a half hours?

      “Okay. Thanks. I’ll finish up here in a minute. What time do you open tomorrow?”

      Right after she left I went back to the article I’d been reading about the christening of Daniel Lester Collins at the Simmons Creek Victory Church. The picture was grainy, but it was obviously Alice holding her newborn son. Next to her stood a gaunt, older man. Surely that wasn’t her husband?

      But it was. The Reverend Lester Collins had presided over the christening of his firstborn child. He had a huge grin on his face.

      And why shouldn’t he? He had a young, pretty wife who—knowing Alice—had probably done his every bidding. And she’d given him a son. For him, life must have been pretty damn good.

      Had it been good for my sister?

      As I left the library and headed up Highway 1082 to the farm, everything I’d read rolled around in my head. Mom had died of AIDS.

      About three months before her death, her illness became public knowledge. In 1986 rural Louisiana that had been a horror too huge to ignore, and all sorts of hell had broken loose. There had been letters to the editor. Demands that the farm be quarantined, that the house be burned down to kill the germs. The American Civil Liberties Union in New Orleans had actually become involved.

      By the time Mom died, only she and Alice were left on the farm. All Mom’s freeloading friends had split. There was no official obituary notice, but afterward there had been a slew of articles and more letters to the editor about the wages of sin and the plague festering at Vidrine Farms.

      I frowned and turned down the azalea-lined driveway. How had Alice stood it? Why on earth had she stayed? And why, when she called, hadn’t she told me it was AIDS?

      Then again, that wouldn’t have changed my reaction.

      I sighed. Despite my carefully cultivated disdain for my spineless, mealymouthed sister, I had to give it to her. She’d showed them all in her own, do-gooder way. I would probably have sponsored a rock festival on the farm and invited the most offensive acts I could find. Then I would have ended it by making a giant bonfire out of that house.

      I pulled to a stop and stared at the house now, so pretty and neat and innocuous-looking. I would have lit the fire gladly but not for the reason ranted about in that stupid newspaper. I would have burned it down for my own satisfaction, to obliterate once and for all the miserable childhood I’d lived in it.

      The sun was sinking behind the house, casting it in soothing shadows, a photo-op for This Old House. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. Burning it down wouldn’t have helped. I would have loved doing it, watching the destruction, feeling the heat, smelling that scorched wood stench. But it wouldn’t have changed anything. I was the product of my rotten childhood, pure and simple. And nothing symbolic would change that.

      But collecting my half of its value in cold, hard cash would go a long way toward easing my pain.

      I slammed out of the car, resolved in my goal to just collect my due and get started on a new, normal life. From upstairs I heard Tripod’s mournful howl, and I spied his ugly snout pressed against the window glass. He probably needed to visit the nearest tree.

      I trotted up the steps, crossed the porch and walked into the house—only to be confronted by Carl.

      “The least you could do is knock.”

      I ignored him. “We need to talk,” I said to Alice, who stood farther down the hall, in the doorway to the kitchen. “By the way, better collect your toy dog. I’m about to let Tripod out.”

      “And that’s another thing,” Carl hollered up after me. “That dog is too big to be allowed indoors—”

      He broke off when Tripod charged down the stairs in one big hurry. The dog leaped up, planting his one front paw on the front door, barking his impatience.

      “What’s the matter?” I cooed to him once I reached the door. “You’re acting like an old man with prostate trouble.” I turned pointedly to Carl and smiled. He looked a good fifteen years older than Alice and not particularly well preserved.

      I opened the door, Tripod ran out, then I turned to Alice. “Where do you want to go to talk?”

      “Can it please wait?” she asked, her voice soft, her hands a nervous knot at her waist.

      My sister is really pretty. She takes after my mother with her sunny hair and vivid blue eyes. She was over forty now and still heavier than was considered healthy. But she was a lot thinner than I’d ever seen her. She looked good. Sweet and soft. Put her in a blue bonnet, and she’d be my image of Little Bo Peep.

      I, meanwhile, apparently took after my unknown father. Red hair, pale skin. Thank God not too many freckles. I was taller than Alice and Mom, with bigger boobs—which I sometimes loved and sometimes hated. Let’s just say they have their uses and have got me past a lot of locked doors a lesser endowed woman couldn’t have entered.

      But that was neither here nor there. “Wait for what?”

      “Daniel’s missing.”

      “Missing? No, he’s not. He’s at his friend’s house. He asked me for a ride.”

      “Without telling me?” All of sudden Alice’s soft side turned fierce.

      “He told you he was going. I heard him.”

      “Well, I didn’t. What friend?”

      “Some kid. I don’t know. Josh,” I said as the name came back to me. “Yeah, Josh.” Of Voodoo Fest and four-wheeler fame.

      Alice and Carl shared a look. “I’ll go get him,” Carl told her. “If you’ll be all right,” he added, shooting me an aggrieved look.

      “I’ll be fine,” she said, patting his arm.

      I slapped my hands, rubbed them together, and grinned. “Well, good. That’s settled. So, big sister. Shall we have that talk?”

      I walked past them and into the kitchen. My stomach had started growling the moment I drove up. Since the house was half mine, I decided that everything in it was, too.

      I stood in the open refrigerator checking out the healthy selection of white bread, bologna and processed cheese. Yuck. I strained to hear the muffled conversation in the hall. Though I couldn’t make out most of the words, I didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know Carl was royally pissed.

      Poor Daniel. I didn’t envy him the ride home.

      Bending back to the refrigerator, I noticed some bacon and took it out, then found eggs. “Do you have any grits?” I asked when Alice came in. “I haven’t had any decent grits since—” since G.G.’s last Southern tour “—since forever.”

      She handed me a Martha White bag and a pot, then sat down while I started the grits, put the bacon in the microwave and slapped a thin pat of butter into a cast-iron skillet. I was seriously hungry. “Want any?” I added as an afterthought.

      “No.”

      I worked in silence as the grits bubbled and thickened. Once I turned them off, I broke three eggs in the skillet. “So here’s the deal,” I began as I scrambled them. “Mom was Granddad’s and Nana’s only heir, and we’re her only heirs.” I turned off the skillet

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