“YOU’RE A HANDSOME GIRL,” said Nadine. “Are you married?”
Maria nodded.
“Do you have any children?”
Maria nodded again. “A daughter. Belinda.” It was difficult to speak.
Her mother hadn’t taken her eyes from Maria’s face. “I asked them what had happened to you,” she said. “They wouldn’t tell me. ‘She’s in a good home.’ That’s all they’d say. Were you in a good home?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The rain had lessened and was now sheeting down the windows in coats of transparent silver.
Maria asked, “Why did you do it?” She felt an astonishing flood of relief.
Her mother sat back on the wooden chair, lifting her disfigured hands into her lap. “When did you find out?”
Maria heard nothing in her voice. It was as dry as dust. “Yesterday,” she said.
Her mother shook her head slowly and looked away. She was small, frail, crippled—it was hard to imagine her having the strength to stab anyone. But she had struck her husband in his sleep and the biggest child, too.
Maria put her arms on the counter and bent close to the wire. “Please.”
Her mother glanced behind her, at the attendant who waited by the door through which they had entered.
“Please,” said Maria. Her thoughts were in disarray. She tried to marshal them—she needed coherence. “Oh, God,” she whispered, struggling for control. She felt the director’s eyes on the nape of her neck.
Nadine looked at her impassively. “I don’t know why you think I could answer that. Is it the only thing you want to know?”
Maria looked down, blinking rapidly, freeing her eyelashes of tears. “Yes. I guess it is.” Nadine studied her, and Maria tried to see in her mother the young woman in Edward Dixon’s photograph. “No. It isn’t the only thing. Tell me about my father.”
She watched pain flicker across her mother’s face and wondered what Nadine had felt as she drove the knife into her husband’s chest. Had his eyes opened? Had she wanted too late to change her mind?
“Did you love him?” she asked. Her mother continued to look at her but didn’t respond. “What was he like?” Nadine gave an impatient shrug. “Please,” said Maria, leaning close to the wire divider again. “I need to know.”
“It’s very unsettling to have to deal with you,” said her mother irritably.
“But you must have expected that I’d show up eventually. You must have at least thought about it.”
“For a while I did, yes. But not recently. Not for years.”
The rain had stopped, and through the window Maria saw clouds rapidly scudding eastward. She didn’t want to be here any longer.
Would she tell Richard and Belinda? Nadine wasn’t anybody Maria wanted as a grandmother for Belinda. Though Richard might find her a more interesting mother-in-law than even Agatha had been, she thought.
She examined her mother, looking for familiar things. Would she, Maria, get arthritis, too? she wondered. Or would Belinda? Nadine had had heart attacks—would Maria and Belinda have them, too?
“Why are you still in this place?”
“Because I want to be.”
“Why?”
Nadine looked at her with distaste. “I’d have to know you a hell of a lot longer than fifteen minutes before I’d—”
Maria slapped the counter and half rose on her chair. The attendant looked over at her but stayed where he was. “Listen! You took my family from me. I thought I was somebody I wasn’t, because of you.” She jabbed the air. “You owe me.” She sat down again, slowly, trembling.
“I owe you what?” said her mother, with contempt. She sat stiffly on her chair, cradling her hands in her lap.
She probably suffers, thought Maria. Still trembling, she looked through the wire at her mother. She tried to remember Belinda’s birth—but her head resonated with the sound of screaming. Maria put her hands carefully over her ears, pushing firmly, then took them away—and the sound was gone.
She probably suffers, she thought again, looking at her mother.
“Nothing,” said Maria dully. “You don’t owe me anything.” She looked around for her handbag and picked it up from the floor.
“Wait.” Nadine leaned closer, and Maria saw the pink skin of her scalp where her white hair was parted. “You asked about your father.”
Maria put her handbag in her lap and faced her mother.
“Everything else you want to know—it’s too late,” said Nadine. “But—” She looked down at her hands, resting grotesque and helpless on the countertop. “Your father—” For the first time she spoke with an effort, and Maria thought there might be pain in her voice. “He was—strong. Healthy. Intelligent.” She gave Maria a wry glance. “Good genes, on one side, anyway.”
Maria was incredulous. “But how could you do it? How could you kill him?”
Nadine was silent.
“Why?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Maria wanted to believe her. For a second she did believe, for a second she thought, I will spend the rest of my life finding a way to prove she’s innocent. My mother. Innocent.
“I killed Ira Gage,” said Nadine. “I didn’t kill your father.”
Maria sat there, across the counter from Nadine, looking at her through a wire divider.
“Tell me,” she said.