Big Easy Bonanza

have been a clue. But you know what doesn’t make sense? Daddy fell out of love with her—why didn’t Tolliver? He saw her at her worst, just like we all did. Look, she’s gorgeous, all right?”
    Skip nodded.
    “And no amount of boozing it up ever seems to change that. And she can be sweet—so sweet—you should see her with Henry sometimes. She must have been a real knockout as a young woman—I mean, she still is, but when she had her faculties, it had to be a boost, don’t you think?”
    They laughed, the tension of the tragedy starting to dissipate a little.
    “Then when she started drinking … after Hélène died—”
    “Hélène?”
    “My baby sister. The one I told you about. You know the story, I know you do. ‘After she died, Bitty was never the same.’ Meaning she never drew another sober breath.”
    “The baby’s name was Hélène?”
    “Yes, after Helen of Troy, because she was so beautiful, Mother always said.” Marcelle had always been wildly jealous of that description.
    “What did she look like?”
    “Look like?”
    “You don’t remember?”
    “I never saw her.”
But I did. I must have.
    “You’re sure?”
    “Sure? Skip, I was only three years old. How can I be sure of anything? I don’t remember her, okay? Anyway, I couldn’t. She never came home from the hospital.”
    “Oh?”
    “What do you mean ‘oh’? Do you believe me or not? Listen, I was just three. I know she didn’t come home because Henry told me. Recently.”
    “What did she die of?”
    “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about her. I guess that was another of the family taboos.” -
But why was it taboo?
She wondered if she could talk to Skip about it.
    “What year was she born in?”
    “What?”
    “When was she born?”
    It wasn’t that Marcelle hadn’t heard the question, it was that it seemed so off-the-wall she doubted her ears. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m twenty-four, and I was three when she was born—she’d be twenty-one, I guess.”
    “Maybe 1968?”
    “I guess.”
    Skip made a show of looking at her watch and stood up quickly. “Oh my God, I’ve got to go report in before I can go home today.” She leaned forward awkwardly to kiss Marcelle on the cheek. “Listen, I know how tough this is. Let me know it there’s anything I can do.”
    She was gone almost before Marcelle realized she meant to leave. Marcelle felt oddly cheated. She’d hoped Skip was settling in for a long, leisurely visit.
    She’d wanted to talk to her about the black woman, at least. Obviously she wasn’t the murderer, but she wondered what Skip had learned about her.
    She made herself a cup of tea, trying to distract herself with thoughts of the woman scorned, but Skip had triggered something and she couldn’t run away from it. She knew, deep down, that she didn’t really believe Henry. The baby had been brought home. How else could she have had such strong feelings of loathing for her? She had them still. The jealousy was almost unbearable, and the more strongly she felt it, the more frightened she became, the more her mind churned, able only to reach the same conclusion, again and again, no matter how hard she tried to wriggle out of the net. She had killed her own sister.
    Surely it was the only explanation. Like Tolliver’s suicide, it would explain so much. It would explain what she considered the great mystery of her childhood—why she had always been an outsider in her own family, ignored by her mother, despised by her brother. Her father had done what he could, but it must have been hard for him, trying to be compassionate toward the little girl who’d killed his daughter.
    How had she done it? she wondered. Had she smothered the baby? Dropped her? She had absolutely no memory of it.
    But a strange thing happened. As she sat, trying to harden herself, to make herself flinty enough to face her crime, she was engulfed by waves of sadness, not for herself but for the baby. For a tiny innocent child not more than a few days old with so much danger in her life. Marcelle began to cry again, but the feelings only intensified and turned to panic, the panic directed full force toward Andrè. He was only four, and there was danger in his world too.
    When she had stopped sniffling and felt she was calm enough not to frighten him, she went into his room. Toys littered the floor like a lumpy rug. In the center was André, butt on his feet in a variation of the crawling position, coloring and