“How did she die?”
Lil looks up at me and her eyes narrow. “Exposure, I guess. Sleeping outside in the cold. Wouldn’t your daddy know this?”
“I just—I thought I remembered him saying it was her heart.”
She shrugs.
“So, she called you five years ago and said—”
“That she’d just left her job. She was a receptionist for some eye doctor’s office. I don’t know the name of it. Lion? Something like ‘Lion.’ Anyway, she wasn’t there anymore and she needed some money. Wanted to know if me or Robert could wire it to a Western Union in Connecticut. I sent what I could.”
“Where in Connecticut?”
“I don’t remember that.” Lil’s eyes flicker to the clock ticking above the rusted stove. “I know what you’re asking, and I don’t know where she is . . .”
“Imogene.”
“Right. I can’t tell you where she is. Don’t know who could. It’s been too long, and the family isn’t around anymore. Some moved away, most passed.”
Defeated, I go to the next question on my list. “What was she like when you did know her?”
“She . . . was shy, when we were kids. Okay in school. She was good at art. Drawing. She loved those how-to-draw books. Animals, faces, fantasy stuff. She had one with her all the time. Sometimes we would camp out in one of our little backyards, you know. There wasn’t any forest or anything behind our houses, just a yard. We’d sleep in this old army surplus tent of my father’s, and Sid would spend the whole night drawing, oh, I don’t know, trolls. Or unicorns. She always wanted to be an artist.”
Another difference between us—I can barely draw a stick-gallows in hangman. “I guess that’s why she went to art school.”
“She never finished, though. Whatever she did at the museum, it wasn’t something you needed a degree for, not back then. Now they say you need one to wash dishes.”
Something sinuous wraps around my leg. I look down to discover one of the cats and resist the urge to kick it away. “Why didn’t she finish school?”
“Sid met your daddy. Had you. And then . . .” Lil sighs deeply. “I talked to Sid the night she left you both, you know?”
Jessa is trying to catch my gaze, but I avoid her. She feels sorry for me. Well, she shouldn’t. Because right now it isn’t even me talking to Lil Eugene. It’s Miles Faye, with one goal: to get to the bottom of this mystery and find my dad. I make that the stone truth and harden myself around it. “What did she—Did she tell you why?”
Her lips screw up into a tremulous line. “There was no good why. She was troubled waters. Like her mother. Siobhan was troubled waters too—that’s what my own mama called her. Sid said your daddy would be better off, you would be better off, everyone would be better off. But I don’t think anybody was ever better off for what that girl did.”
The clock ticks away the silence while a cat with what might be a sinus condition jockeys for position in Lil’s lap, wheezing and purring in turns. She stares into its snot-streaked face, and who knows what she sees there, but her voice is duller and distant when she speaks again.
“Well, I really got to be running out now.”
Unexpectedly, Jessa leans across the table. “Im is your cousin and you just met her. Can’t you stay for a while?”
Lil levers herself stiffly off the floor, shedding animals from her lap as she rises. “It’s my doctor’s appointment. Not supposed to be late. But I have some pictures and things, if you want to take them with you.”
“That would be great. Anything you can give me. And maybe your number, so I can call you sometime? I’ll leave mine in case you remember anything.”
She hesitates in the kitchen doorway. “Just hold on a minute.” With a last look, she ducks into the hallway.
I jump as Jessa slaps her hand over mine. “Okay, she’s weird, Im. I mean, like, I know teachers are weird—I had Mrs. Marconi in sophomore year, and she had, like, a deli in her desk? Not chips or breath mints or anything. Lunch meat, pickles, huge bottles of Pepsi in the bottom drawer. But your second cousin is unusual.”
“Maybe it’s the curse,” I say, fingering the stone in my pocket as I watch the biggest of the cats mount the kitchen counter, flop backward, and lick the dark fur between its legs.
“What curse?”
I shrug.