Martha Djiak came to the door. Her square, lined face was set in a frown suitable for dismissing door-to-door salesmen. After a moment she recognized me and the frown lightened a little. She opened the inner door. I could see she had an apron covering the crisply ironed front of her dress: I’d never seen her at home without an apron on.
“Well, Victoria. It’s been a long time since you brought little Caroline over for a visit, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it has,” I agreed unenthusiastically.
Louisa would not let Caroline go to her grandparents’ alone. If she or Gabriella couldn’t take her, they gave me two quarters for the bus and careful instructions to stay with Caroline until it was time to return home again. I never understood why Mrs. Djiak couldn’t come and fetch Caroline herself. Maybe Louisa was afraid her mother would try to keep the baby so she wouldn’t grow up with an unwed single parent.
“Since you’re down here, maybe you’d like a cup of coffee.”
It wasn’t effusive, but she’d never been demonstrative. I accepted with as much good cheer as I could muster and she opened the storm door for me. She was careful not to touch the glass panel with her hands. I slid through as unobtrusively as I could, remembering to take my shoes off in the tiny entryway before following her to the kitchen.
As I’d hoped, she was alone. The ironing board stood open in front of the stove, a shirt draped across it. She folded the shirt, laid it on the clothes basket, and collapsed the ironing board with quick silent motions. When everything was stowed in the tiny pantry behind the refrigerator, she put on water to boil.
“I talked to Louisa this morning. She said you’d been down there yesterday.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “It’s tough to see someone that lively laid up the way she is.”
Mrs. Djiak spooned coffee into the pot. “Lots of people suffer more with less cause.”
“And lots of people carry on like Attila the Hun and never get a pimple. It just goes to show, doesn’t it?”
She took two cups from a shelf and stood them primly on the table. “I hear you’re a detective now. Doesn’t really seem like a woman’s job, does it? Kind of like Caroline, working on community development, or whatever she calls it. I don’t know why you two girls couldn’t get married, settle down, raise a family.”
“I guess we’re waiting for men as good as Mr. Djiak to come along,” I said.
She looked at me seriously. “That’s the trouble with you girls. You think life is romantic, like they show in the movies. A good steady man who brings his pay home every Friday is worth a lot more than fancy dinners and flowers.”
“Was that Louisa’s problem too?” I asked gently.
She set her lips in a thin line and turned back to the coffee. “Louisa had other problems,” she said shortly.
“Like what?”
She carefully took a covered sugar bowl down from the cupboard over the stove and placed it with a little pitcher of cream in the middle of the table. She didn’t say anything until she’d finished pouring the coffee.
“Louisa’s problems are old now. And they never were any of your business.”
“And what about Caroline? Are they any concern of hers?” I sipped the rich coffee, which Louisa still infused in the old European style.
“They don’t have anything to do with her. She’d be a good deal better off if she learned not to poke around in other people’s closets.”
“Louisa’s past matters a lot to Caroline. Louisa is dying and Caroline is feeling very lonely. She’d like to know who her father was.”
“And that’s why you came down here? To help her dig up all that trash? She should be ashamed she doesn’t have any father, instead of talking about it with everyone she knows.”
“What’s she supposed to do?” I asked impatiently. “Kill herself because Louisa never married the man who got her pregnant? You act like it was all Louisa and Caroline’s fault. Louisa was sixteen years old—fifteen when she got pregnant. Don’t you think the man had any responsibility in this?”
She clenched the coffee cup so tightly, I was afraid the ceramic might shatter. “Men—have difficulty controlling themselves. We all know that,” she said thickly. “Louisa must have led him on. But she would never admit it.”
“All I want to know is his name,” I said as quietly as I could. “I think Caroline has a right to know if she really wants to. And a right to see if her father’s family would give her a little warmth.”
“Rights!” she said bitterly. “Caroline’s rights. Louisa’s! What about my right to a life of peace and decency? You’re as bad as your mother was.”
“Yeah,” I said. “In my book that’s a compliment.”
Behind me someone turned a key in the back door. Martha paled slightly and set down her coffee cup.
“You must not mention any of this in front of him,” she said urgently. “Tell him you were just visiting Louisa and stopped by. Promise, Victoria.”
I made a sour face. “Yeah, sure, I suppose.”