PI On A Hot Tin Roof

something she didn’t think happened often. “I’m going to tell you something. Buddy was a plague on us, too. We might have not known it—or maybe we just didn’t want to admit it—but he was, and he was going to bring us down eventually, whether you or someone else was the instrument of it. Think I didn’t know he was skipping court? Didn’t know who those people were from Nicasio’s office? Come in, and let me talk to you.”
    Kristin had been right. Adele had been more or less lying in wait for her. She took Talba into the sunroom, explaining that it was “just about the only room I can stand anymore.”
    The house seemed bereft in a physical as well as spiritual way. Crumpled napkins lay forgotten on the dining room table, and in the kitchen languished half-read newspapers. Dust you could write in covered the surfaces. Small, stray bits of paper and detritus like bottle caps and pencils—even a Ritz cracker—had been dropped on the floor and abandoned by a family too demoralized to bother bending over to retrieve them. Instead of furniture polish and the lingering scent of the morning’s bacon and eggs, sour mildewy smells pervaded the entire first floor—the odors of neglect. Apparently, the Champagnes hadn’t replaced Alberta.
    “Sit down. I’m seeing you for Lucy’s sake. You almost killed her.”
    Talba obeyed. “You mean because of what happened to her father?”
    “Because of what happened to her. Do you understand what a hard thing that was for a child? To learn what her father was—and have the whole world know?”
    “And then to lose him.”
    “Her world is in ashes, and you lit the fire that made it happen. You betrayed us, Sandra.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been worried about her.”
    “Like I said, she’s been having nightmares every night since Buddy died. And you made it happen.” She twisted jerkily, seeming to come to some kind of decision. “You know what? This idea of Kristin’s is crazy. I’m sorry I ever agreed to it.” But Talba didn’t think so. Adele was a shrewd woman. She wouldn’t have agreed without reasons of her own. Talba wondered what on earth they were.
    “Well, yes and no,” she said. “About it being crazy. She guessed right about how badly I’d feel. She knew I’d work harder than any other P.I. in town to find out what really happened.”
    “You’re being well paid for it.”
    “Well, I
wasn’t
paid for exposing Buddy. I did it because it needed to be done.”
    She was testing the waters. To her surprise, Adele didn’t jump on her. “Buddy was a wicked man. Living with him was hard on all of us. But that doesn’t excuse you.”
    Talba had the sense she was just saying what she thought she ought to say. “Well, enough about me,” she said. “May I see Lucy?”
    Adele shrugged. “Up to her.”
    “Can you ask her?”
    “I’ll ask her. But I want to be with y’all when you talk to her.”
    “Fine with me.”
    Adele disappeared and came back with the girl, who looked as if she hadn’t washed her hair since her father’s death. She had lost weight; actually looked better in one sense. But Talba felt terribly for her; she’d suffered a monumental loss, and it wasn’t only her father’s death. It was dealing with who he was, and with school, after everyone found out. She wondered if the girl was still at McGehee.
    She knew she was going to have to go through the same thing with Lucy as she did with Adele—a million apologies and a thousand recriminations. And in this case, tears.
    “Hi.”
    Lucy said nothing.
    “You hate me, right? I don’t know what to say, baby. Except that I’m sorry.”
    “It’s not good enough.” And so it went.
    But, as with Adele, she didn’t get the feeling Lucy really blamed her. She took a chance. “There was a piece of you that knew all along, wasn’t there? About your father?”
    Water pooled in the girl’s eyes. “No! I thought my father was a god.” It came out as a sob.
    Talba had enough sense not to mention the way the girl had treated him—more or less as if he were a loathsome insect. That was just hormones, she supposed.
    “Baby, I—”
    But Lucy interrupted. “Do you know what it means to worship someone, really
worship
him—and discover he’s a crook? I mean, your parents are the ones who teach you how you’re supposed to act—what are you supposed to think when—” It seemed for awhile she couldn’t go on, but she finally said, “When you find out it’s all a