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if he was strapped there. “You never told me any of that.”
    “There are a number of things I haven’t told you. I never had to, till now.”
    “Hold them for the present, will you? This is a hell of a time to open the floodgates.” He stood up, turning his back on me and towering over her. “What if the old man hears about it?”
    “What if he does?”
    “Dad’s estate is hanging in the balance; you know that. All that woman needs is a good excuse to take it away from us. And we’re not going to give it to her, are we?”
    He raised his hand to the level of her face and brought the open palm against her cheek. It wasn’t a blow, exactly, and it wasn’t exactly a love pat. It made a small slapping noise, and it seemed to jar her.
    It jarred me. They were one of those couples who couldn’t pull together. The energy of their marriage passed back and forth between them like an alternating current that shocked and paralyzed.
    The woman had begun to cry, dry-eyed. Her husband tried to comfort her with little noises and touches of his hands. Her dry sobs continued like hiccups. She said between them:
    “I’m sorry. I always do the wrong thing. I spoil your life for you.”
    “That’s nonsense. Be quiet.”
    He took her out to their car, and then came back to the front door. “Archer?”
    I was waiting in the hall. “What do you want?”
    “If you have any sense and compunction at all, you won’t spread this around.”
    “Spread what around?”
    “The trouble with my daughter. I don’t want you talking about it.”
    “I have to report to Russo.”
    “But you don’t have to tell him everything that was said. Particularly what just passed between us.”
    “You mean about your father’s estate?”
    “That’s right. I was indiscreet. I’m asking you to be discreet for me.”
    I said I would do my best.

chapter
6
    I went out to the kitchen. Cousin Gloria was drying dishes at the sink, her black hair tied up on each side with shoelaces. She gave me a quick bright glance over her shoulder. “You shouldn’t come out here. This place is a mess.”
    “It looks all right to me. Everything’s clean.”
    “I have been working on it,” she admitted. “I’m practicing up for getting married again.”
    “Have you picked the lucky man?”
    She turned to face me with a plate in one hand and the dishtowel in the other. “As a matter of fact, I have. He’s a beautiful person.
I’m
the one who’s lucky.”
    She was polishing the plate as if it was a symbol of her future. There was something touching about her faith and energy.
    “May I offer my congratulations?”
    “Sure, and I accept. We’d be married now, but we want to do it right. That’s why I took this little job with Tom on top of my regular job. I’d do it for nothing, but Tom can afford to pay me.”
    She was a lively, open girl, and in a mood to talk now that Laurel’s parents were out of hearing.
    “Where do you work?” I asked her.
    “In the kitchen at the Medical Center. I’m studying to be a dietitian. Harry’s in the food business, too, when he’s working.Right now he isn’t working. We have a dream that someday we’ll open our own little restaurant.”
    “I hope you make it, Gloria.”
    “We’ll make it. He’s a smart man, and he has a nice touch with people. Even Tom likes him.”
    “What do you mean, ‘even’?”
    “Tom doesn’t like too many people. He didn’t like Flaherty—that was my first—at all. You could count the people he really likes on the fingers of one hand.” She raised her left hand, with the fingers spread. “Losing his mother the way he did, when he was so terribly young, it made him kind of suspicious of other people. My mother often said that she’s surprised Tom turned out as well as he did, considering the poor start he had. I think old Mr. Russo deserves a good deal of credit. Old Mr. Russo has his limitations, but he’s a good father to Tom, and always has been.”
    She heard herself