BeBe waited until we heard Jonathan’s car pull out of her driveway.
“Jimmy?” she said, her hands on her hips. “Jimmy?” She shook her head sadly. “You never said a word. I’m your best friend and you never said a word about this.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “Anyway, I just found out myself.”
“Found out what?” Daniel put the plates of crab cakes on the kitchen counter, along with a platter of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, over which he’d spooned some homemade vinaigrette.
“Weezie’s uncle James has a boyfriend. Jonathan McDowell. Honestly, Weezie, this is the juiciest news I’ve heard in years, right after the thing about Caroline being killed with no drawers. I mean, I knew he was gay, but I never said anything because you Catholics are so prissy about that kind of thing. But you knew about Jonathan and you never said a word.”
I helped myself to a crab cake and some tomatoes. “James never told me in so many words. He’s a painfully private person.”
I picked at my food, brooding over all the injustices in the world. From what Jonathan said, it was going to take heaven and earth to bring Lewis Hargreaves to justice. And in the meantime, he’d probably sell the Moses Weed cupboard and who knew what else from Beaulieu, and make a couple hundred thousand in the process.
“This whole thing sucks,” I said finally, pushing away a crab cake that I’d picked to pieces with my fork.
“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked. “Too much cilantro?”
“It’s not the food,” I said. “It’s this whole deal that gripes my grits. Look at what’s happened here. No matter what we do on Monday, Lewis Hargreaves is still going to have his fancy shop and his zillion-dollar townhouse and his big fancy van. And I’ll still be an itinerant picker who drives a beat-up turquoise truck. People like Hargreaves don’t get arrested for crawling out a second-story window. They don’t get booked and finger-printed and have sweaty grubby hands patting them down. And they sure as hell don’t have to wear jail shoes.”
“Jail shoes?” BeBe and Daniel said it together.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’m lousy company tonight. Sorry to eat and run, but I think I’ll eat and run.”
“No dessert?” BeBe asked, holding up a box of the Fudgsicles.
“Not this time,” I said. “Talk to you tomorrow maybe.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Daniel volunteered.
He held my hand as we walked out to my truck. It made me want to cry. Tal had never held hands with me after we got married.
“You feeling all right?” Daniel asked, glancing over at me.
“Just kind of blue,” I admitted. “It’s been a long day. I’ll get over it.”
“Let me come home with you,” he said. “I won’t stay over. We could just sit on the sofa. Maybe listen to music or something. Hey. I’ve got it. I’ll give you a back rub. I give a killer back rub.”
I shook my head. “Not tonight.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “I’ll even listen to show tunes if you like.”
I bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It was just a little joke.”
“Was that a crack about my uncle being gay?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I was just trying to cheer you up. Jeez, why are you being so sensitive all of a sudden?”
“Do you have a problem with my uncle being gay?” I demanded.
“No,” he said, stammering slightly. “I told you before, I hate all this family stuff. I’m not interested in that kind of thing.” He reached to pull me closer. “You and me. That’s all I’m interested in, Weezie. Everybody else can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”
“But it’s not just you and me,” I said sharply. “I’m part of a family, Daniel. A screwed-up, nutty family. The Foleys put the fun in dysfunctional. But as messed up as they are—as I am—I love them. And I know they love me too. Mostly.”
“So?” He raised an eyebrow, suddenly tensed.
“You’re part of a family too, in case you’ve forgotten,” I said. “But you won’t admit it. You won’t even talk about it. And that worries me.”
“Why should it worry you? You think there’s something wrong with my family? What? You think the Stipaneks aren’t as good as the Talmadge Evans family? You afraid we’re a bunch of inbred freaks or something?”
“Tal’s family?” I said, hooting. “They’re nothing. I never even took his name when I got married, in case you hadn’t noticed. I just think all those secrets of yours are really dangerous, Daniel. They eat at you.”
His hand tightened on my shoulder.
“What the hell are you talking about? What secrets?”
I bit my lip. Suddenly I wished BeBe had never talked me into looking at Daniel’s personnel file. Maybe Daniel was right about one thing, the past was none of my business. But damn it, his past kept getting in our way.
“I know about your mom,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
His blue eyes seemed to bore a hole through my forehead. It was as though he could see the wormy little secrets stored there.
“What are you talking about? What do you know about my mother?”
There was no graceful way to put it. I’d done something low and sneaky. It was impossible to put a nice spin to this. Just tell it, I told myself. Get it over with. Once it’s out in the open, you can talk it out.
“I know your mother got involved with Hoyt Gambrell, back when you were just a kid. I know there was a terrible scandal. I know she married him, and he went to prison and she abandoned you and your brothers. I know that’s why you left Savannah. Because of her.”
“Who have you been talking to?” His voice was calm, but his fingers were digging into the flesh of my shoulders.
“Nobody,” I stammered. I’d been expecting fire, now he was killing me with coldness.
“Tell me,” he said. “That was twenty years ago. Who told you about it?”
I grabbed his hand. “You’re hurting me.”
He loosened his grip, but his blue eyes were unwavering. “Who’s been talking to you about my family?”
“Daniel, that’s beside the point,” I said pleadingly. “I don’t care what your mother did. I swear to God, I’m not judging you because of her.”
“Who’s been digging around in my family’s dirt? I need to know.”
“One of BeBe’s boyfriends told us,” I said finally. “It wasn’t his fault. I started it. I couldn’t figure out why you were so secretive about your family. It worried me, Daniel. So BeBe and I looked at your personnel file from Guale. We saw the name you’d put down as your next of kin. Paula Gambrell. I knew you didn’t have a sister, so I was wondering who she was. And BeBe said she’d heard that name before. So she called her boyfriend. He knows everything that ever happened in Savannah. He’d forgotten your mother’s name, but he told us about Hoyt Gambrell…and about what happened,” I added lamely.
“And you two girls had a good giggle about it, didn’t you?” Daniel said. “That BeBe just loves juicy gossip. And you don’t mind it either, do you, Weezie?”
“No,” I cried. “It wasn’t like that. I felt awful once I knew. BeBe felt bad too. We didn’t know, Daniel.”
“You had no right,” he said.
The street lamp at the curb spilled warm yellow light on Daniel’s face, but it was absolutely still. Stony. Unrecognizable. He stalked away, out of the pool of yellow light and into the gray-blue darkness.