“What date was this will executed?” I demanded. A reasonable question, one within my rights.

“November fifteenth,” Hambly said. “Year before last.”

One week before my father disappeared.

I left, too angry to be scared. But I knew how it would play to the cops. If Jean knew that Ezra was going to cut her out of two million because of her relationship with Alex, it would be one more reason to kill him. That’s how Detective Mills would see it. Did Jean know? When did she know? When did Ezra cut her out? I could hear Mills asking those exact questions. But had she?

Damn Clarence Hambly and his petty vindictiveness!

Back in the truck, Bone scrambled into my lap and licked my face. I rubbed his back, glad for the company. I realized that for the past days, while addled by alcohol, grief, and anger, the world had moved on. Mills had not been idle; she’d targeted me. I was a suspect. The concept was too much. I couldn’t get my head around it. In the past day, I’d come to understand so many things, none of them pleasant. Now this. I had fifteen million dollars, but only if I surrendered what little remained of myself.

I sat in that driveway, under windows that looked like mirrored eyes, and dark thoughts twisted my mouth into a bitter smile as I thought of Ezra’s will and his last effort to manipulate me. My life was still a mess, but in this regard I knew something that Ezra didn’t, something that he could never imagine. Black humor moved where the fear snake had been; it bubbled like hot oil and it released me. I pictured Ezra’s face, the horror if he only knew, the utter disbelief. I didn’t want his money. The price was too high. The thought made me laugh, so that’s what I did as I drove away from Hambly House, circa 1788. I laughed like an idiot. I fucking howled.

Yet by the time I got home, the hysteria was gone and I was empty. I felt lacerated inside, as if I were full of glass; but I thought of Max Creason, who’d had his fingers broken and his nails ripped out, yet who still has the strength and humor to tell a total stranger to stop being a pussy. It helped.

I put Bone in the backyard with food, water, and a belly rub, and then I went inside. My note to Barbara was where I’d left it. I picked up the pen and added this: “Don’t be surprised to find a dog in the backyard-he’s mine. He can come inside if you want.” But I knew it wouldn’t happen; Barbara didn’t like dogs. The one I’d brought to the marriage, another yellow Lab, had never gotten to come inside. We’d been together for three years when I married Barbara; then he went from constant companion to barely tolerated nuisance, another casualty to poor choices. I vowed that that would never happen again. As I watched Bone from the kitchen window, I felt the great hollowness of the house around me, its emptiness, and I thought of my mother.

Like my father, she was raised dirt-poor, but, unlike Ezra, she’d been content in her own skin. She’d never wanted the big house, the cars, and the prestige, none of it. Ezra, however, had been ravenous, and as he bettered himself, he came to resent her for the constant reminder she was. Ezra had hated his past, been ashamed of it, and history had shared his bed.

This was my theory, for how else could two people rise from abject poverty, bear two children, yet end up worse than strangers?

Years of this resentment had made my mother as hollow as this house, the well into which Ezra had dumped his anger, his frustration, and his hatred. She’d taken it all, borne it, until she was a shadow, and all she had for her children was her fierce embrace and the admonition to be silent. She’d never stood up for us, not until the night she died. It was that brief strength, that incandescent flash of will that had killed her, and I’d let it happen.

The argument had been about Alex.

When I closed my eyes, I could see the ruby red carpet.

W e were at the top of the stairs, on the broad landing. I looked at my watch because I had to look away from Jean and from my father. She was defying him, and the explosion was building. It was four minutes after nine, dark out, and I barely recognized my sister. She was not the broken-down wreck that the psychiatric hospital had sent back to us. Not even close.

Mother stood, stunned, hand to her mouth. Ezra was shouting, Jean shouting back, jabbing a finger into his chest. It could not end well, and I stared as if at a train wreck; and I watched my mother reach out, as if she could stop the train with her ten small fingers.

And I did nothing.

“That is enough!” my father yelled. “That is how it’s going to be.”

“No,” Jean said. “Not this time. It’s my life!”

Father stepped closer, towered over her. I expected Jean to melt away, but she did not.

“It stopped being your life when you tried to kill yourself,” he said. “Then it became mine again. You’re barely out of the hospital. You can’t possibly think right about anything. We’ve been patient, we’ve been nice, but now it’s time for her to go.”

“Alex is none of your business. You have no right to ask that.”

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, young lady. I’m not asking. That woman is trouble and I’ll not have her messing up your head. She’s just using you.”

“For what? I’m not rich. I’m not famous.”

“You know what.”

“You can’t even say it, can you? For sex, Dad. Yeah. For sex. We’re fucking all the time. What’re you going to do about it?”

Father went suddenly still. “You’re an embarrassment to this family. It’s disgraceful the way you two carry on.”

“So there it is,” Jean said. “It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s all about you! It’s always been about you! Well, I’ve had it.”

Jean turned to walk away. She didn’t look at me, didn’t look at Mother; she just turned and took a single step. Then Ezra grabbed her. He jerked her so hard that she fell to her knees.

“Don’t you walk away from me! Not ever!”

Jean pulled herself to her feet and twisted her arm free. “That’s the last time you’ll ever put your hands on me,” she told him.

The moment seemed to freeze, Jean’s words hanging between them. I saw my mother’s face, pure despair, and again her eyes beseeched me. Yet the shadow of my father held me, and Mother must have sensed this.

“Ezra,” she said.

“You stay out of this,” he commanded, eyes on Jean like a promise of violence.

“Ezra,” she repeated, taking a monumental step toward him. “Just let her be. She’s grown now, and she’s right.”

“And I told you to shut it!” His eyes never left Jean, and when she tried again to turn away, he snatched her up and shook her, an angry boy with a boneless doll; but Jean had bones, and I feared they might break. “I said don’t you ever walk away from me!” Then he was grunting, incoherent, and Jean’s head was loose on her neck. I watched as my mother took hell into her hands.

“Leave her alone, Ezra.” She pulled at his massive arm. Jean had gone completely limp, but he continued to shake her. “Damn it, Ezra,” she shouted. “Leave my daughter alone!” She began to beat on his shoulders with her narrow fists, and tears shone in the seams of her face. I tried to move, to speak, but I was paralyzed. Then he struck out, a backhand that traveled forever; and then she was falling. Time seemed to stand still but didn’t; then she was crumpled at the foot of the stairs, another boneless doll in the house my father made.

Jean collapsed when my father released her. He stared at his hand and then at me.

“It was an accident, boy. You see that, don’t you, son?”

I looked into his eyes, saw for the first time that he needed me, and felt myself nod; it was an irrevocable step.