"Me? Poor me. That's nice that you came to talk to poor me. Did you know I am poor? Poor me is poor? I was always poor, but now I'm broke, you see, and so is Aunt Charlotte, who was always going to leave everything to me, so I never really worried too, too much about being poor, because I'm a doctor and I can always earn a living, so how poor is that, but going to Africa to study epidemiology, that doesn't bring in a lot of money, although it does make you realize that when you're poor here, you would be rich there, but Aunt Charlotte has never been to Africa, so she can hardly be expected to understand that . . ."
As Leanne rambled on, Miranda paced up and down the room. She knew she should be trying to comfort her. This was a financial tragedy of major proportions, she gathered. She should sit down beside Leanne and say soothing things. Instead, she walked to the windows, then back to the door, then to the windows again, and said absolutely nothing.
"Poor Aunt Charlotte is finally poor now, just as she always thought she would be, and now we really will have to auction the portraits and the chairs and the silver spoons, but she thought it would be death duties, that's what she calls them, total affectation, and now the death duties will come while she's still alive, crazy old thing. Well, at least she'll be able to see her fantasy come true, that's one way to look at it . . ."
Finally, Miranda got hold of herself. She had come here to say something, not to listen, not to sympathize. But disaster had struck. What she had to come to say would have to wait. Leanne was in trouble. She needed Miranda. Miranda would speak to her, patiently, gently, discover the parameters of the disaster, offer advice and hope. "What the hell happened?" she snapped. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Don't blame me," Leanne prattled on. "I told her not to trust him, I told her not to give him a penny, and she didn't, she says--not a penny."
"Give who a penny?" She saw just how far gone Leanne was. She moved the bottle to a distant table, then came back and sat beside her. "Who?" she said again, curious now, impatient. "Who?"
"No, not a penny, not one penny," Leanne was saying. She shook her head triumphantly. "Not one penny--every penny." She took no notice of Miranda. "Not to him, she says. No, not to him, just into an investment he told her about, a nice, safe fund, a friend of his on Wall Street, and he would take only a finder's fee sort of thing, which would all be used for Henry, anyway, and not from her, but from the fund manager . . ."
A light dawned. Miranda, with foreboding, said, "Kit?"
"And it was a closed fund, but he could get her in, this friend of his. The manager's nephew could get her into this closed fund. She never could resist anything exclusive, the idiotic old bat."
"Leanne, get up." Miranda pulled her to her feet. "You're kind of hysterical, right? So take a deep breath or something."
"She wouldn't let him stay in her house, even to take care of Henry when I was away, locked him away in the boathouse like Mr. Rochester's mad wife--and now it's all gone up in flames. She couldn't bear him, thought he was a fraud, and then suddenly she gives him all her money, and then suddenly, more suddenly, it's gone. It's all gone . . . I was away for six weeks, and look what happened . . ." She grabbed a pillow and threw it.
Miranda wondered if this was what she was like when she ranted and raved.
"Stop it!" she said. "You're acting just like me!"
She grabbed Leanne. Leanne struggled. Just for a minute. Then collapsed, sobbing, in Miranda's arms.
Miranda buried her face in Leanne's hair. "That's better," she said.
"Better that I'm sobbing?" Leanne said, her voice muffled in Miranda's shoulder.
"Better for me. I can hear myself think."
"Go to hell."
"Let's take a walk, okay? Outside. Fresh air."
"Fresh air," Leanne repeated dully.
They walked to the water's edge, then up and down the little beach. There was a moon, a sliver of a moon low in the black sky.
"Sober yet?" Miranda asked. But it was she who felt drunk. Drunk with confusion, with need, with impatience.
"Yeah, yeah. That's where you met Kit." She pointed to the spot on the beach Miranda had shown her. "The financial wizard." She took a deep breath. "What am I going to do?" she said softly. "What am I going to do with her? Maybe she'll die before she has to move out, before she realizes what's happened."
"Maybe." Miranda tried to listen, but it was difficult for her to focus. She had come to the house that night with a purpose. It had taken all her resolve to drive up the long driveway, to ring the bell, to follow Hilda into the living room. And now, a catastrophe. "I'm sorry, Leanne," she remembered to say. "I'm really sorry about all this."
Leanne kicked at a pile of shells. "Why are you here anyway?"