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you pour? According to my mother’s will. It would be more effective theater if you began amicably, so that your venom later will have some prominence.”
    â€œHer will ?” said Ariel, almost spitting. Claimayne pushed the bottle again, and she picked it up with both hands, a bit shakily. “She killed herself before the ink was dry on it! Didn’t just kill herself—got out of bed and climbed up onto the roof, with a grenade !—and blew herself to pieces! Sound mind, my ass!” She rubbed her jaw, as if it hurt to speak, and glowered at Claimayne. “And you were no help—in your room with the door locked, crying and cussing while she did it, and then sick in bed for four days while I arranged her funeral, which you didn’t even attend .”
    â€œAnd pour,” Claimayne prompted. As Ariel splashed wine into his glass and hers, he smiled. “Hamlet said ‘The Everlasting hath fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter’—she opposed the canon with a grenade!” He shook his head and added thoughtfully, “I’m afraid that for a long time she had entertained thoughts of suicide.”
    For a moment no one had anything to say, and the hiss and clatter of the rain outside the open French windows was the only sound; then, evidently to break the silence, Madeline said, “Entertained? I can see . . . harboring thoughts of suicide, indulging them . . . but not entertaining them.”
    Scott simply held still, waiting for the tingling in his face to subside. Wow, he thought shakily. Ariel’s cheerful welcome an hour ago was clearly faked, a calculated setup for this attack.
    He leaned back and opened his mouth, and instantly Ariel was staring at him; he shut his mouth and looked away.
    What she had said was true. He had resented computer-generated art and the alleged necessity of using social media like Facebook, and when he had neglected or skimped several commissions because of being drunk, he had soon found himself effectively blackballed as a commercial graphic artist. After that, he had tried to sell his paintings—at juried shows, then at nonjuried shows, and finally at any sidewalk arts-and-crafts fair, often alongside booths selling food dehydrators and innovative mops—and finally he had thrown out all his paints and brushes and lights and air brushes and compressors, and bitterly vowed that he would never again even sketch a sleeping cat.
    White light flared silently outside the French windows, and a moment later Scott twitched as thunder cracked and rolled its echoes over the dark hills. Ariel half stood up, apparently meaning to close the windows, then just shook her head wearily and sat back down. Scott noticed that she was now wearing a little silver gyroscope on a chain around her neck.
    â€œShe was in very poor health, these last few years,” Claimayne went on imperturbably. “Colon cancer, chemotherapy, several operations—during the last year she had no rectum to speak of.”
    â€œFor God’s sake,” Ariel burst out, “who’d want to speak of it? We’re indifferent to your mother’s rectum.” She winced and closed her eyes, then gingerly rubbed the corners of her jaw.
    Scott’s own jaw was aching, and he had just reached up to massage it, and he was wincing too, when she opened her eyes and staredat him; both of them lowered their hands, and after a few seconds they looked away from each other.
    Madeline said, he thought, that Ariel does spiders.
    The swinging doors to the kitchen opened then, and white-haired Rita, who had been the housekeeper at Caveat for as long as Scott could remember, sidled in carrying a wide tray.
    â€œRita!” exclaimed Madeline. “We’re back!”
    The elderly Mexican woman smiled warmly at her. “Not to stay long in this terrible place, I hope, Madeline sweetie!”
    Claimayne ignored her and waved toward the far side of the