"The mother knew what I was doing, I swear. She could sense it. She kept looking at me while I cooked up the steaks. I was adding a little of this, a little of that. It was a special recipe for the men in her life, I told her. And she looked at me dead in the eye and she said: Good. They deserve it. So she knew what I was going to do.

"She even helped me serve them. We put the steaks out on the plates-big steaks they were, and I'd cooked them so rare and tender, swimming in blood and grease the way she'd said her boys liked them-we put them on the plates and she said: I had another boy, but he ran away. And I told her: I know. And she said: I know you know.

"Then we gave them their steaks. The poison didn't take long. They were dead after half a dozen bites. Terrible waste of good meat, but it did the job. There they were, sitting in the backyard with the stars coming out, their faces black, and their lips curled back from their teeth. It was quite a night…"

She fell silent. The possibility of tears had passed.

"What happened to the mother?"

"She packed up and left there and then."

"And the bodies?"

"I left them in the yard. I didn't want to bring them back here. Godless sons of bitches. I hope they rotted where they sat, though I doubt they did. Somebody probably smelled them the next day, once the sun got up."

A hundred thousand words ago, I thought, I'd wondered in these pages if the family of Dwight Huddie ever wondered about their missing son. Now I had the answer.

"Did you tell Dwight what you did?"

"No," Zabrina said. "I never did. I never told anybody until now."

"And did you really enjoy it?" I asked her.

She thought on this a moment. Finally, she said: "Yes I did. I suppose I got that from Mama. But I remember distinctly looking at those bastards dead, and thinking: I have a talent for this. And you know there's nothing in the world more fun than doing something you're good at."

She seemed to realize that she wasn't going to be able to improve on this as a departure line, because she gave me a crooked little smile, and without another word, she headed for the door, and was gone.

Astonishment upon astonishment. I would never have believed Zabrina would be capable of such a thing. And the way it just came out like that, in the most matter-of-fact way; amazing. The truth is, it gives me hope. It makes me think I've maybe underestimated our ability as a family to oppose the powers that are going to come our way. At the very least we'll take a few of the bastards with us when we go. Zabrina can get Mitchell Geary into bed, and when she's had her wicked way, poison him.

Anyway, I went to see Cesaria.

It wasn't as oppressive up there as it had been the last time I'd entered her chambers, nor was Cesaria lying inert on her bed. She was sitting in the Jefferson room, which Zabrina told me was an extremely rare thing for her to do. It was a little before dawn; there were candles lit around the room, which flattered it considerably. Their light mellowed Cesaria too. She sat at the table, sipping hot tea and looking resplendent. There was no trace of the vengeful creature I'd seen unleashed in the Geary house. She invited me to sit down, and offered me some tea, which Zelim brought and set before me. Zabrina had already gone. There was just the two of us; and I will admit I was a little nervous. Not that I feared she was going to fly into an uncontrollable fury and tear the house apart. It simply made me anxious to be in the company of someone who contained such power, but who was displaying not a mote of it. It was like taking tea with a man-eating tiger; I

couldn't help but wonder when she was going to show her claws.

"I'm leaving again, very soon," she explained. "And this time-just so you know-I may not come back. If I don't return, then the control of this house falls to you." I asked her where she was off to. "To find Galilee," she said.

"I see."

"And if I can, to save him from himself."

"You know he's out at sea?" I said.

"Yes, I know."

"I wish I could tell you where. But you probably already know."

"No. I don't. That's one of the reasons why I'm putting you on notice that I may not return. There was a time when I'd have visions of him almost every day, but I put them out of my head-I didn't want to deal with him-and now he's invisible to me. I'm sure he worked to make it so."

"So why do you want to find him now?"

"To persuade him that he's loved."

"So you want him to come home?"

Cesaria shook her head. "It's not me who loves him…" she said.

"It's Rachel."

"Yes. It's Rachel." Cesaria set down her teacup and took out one of her little Egyptian cigarettes. She passed the packet over to me. I took one, and lit up. It was the foulest tasting thing I've ever smoked.

"I never thought I'd hear myself say this but what that woman feels for Galilee may be the saving of us all. Do you not like the cigarette?"

"No, it's fine."

"I think they taste like camel dung personally, but they have sentimental associations."

"Yes?"

"Your father and I spent some blissful weeks in Cairo together, just before he met your mother…"

"So when you smoke them you remember him?"

"No, when I smoke them I remember an Egyptian boy called Muhammed, who fucked me among the crocodiles on the banks of the Nile."

I coughed so hard tears came to my eyes, which amused her mightily.

"Oh poor Maddox," she said when I'd recovered myself somewhat, "you've never really known what to make of me, have you?"

"Frankly, no."

"I suppose I've kept you at a distance because you're not mine. I look at you and you remind me of what a philanderer your father was. That hurts. After all these years, that still hurts. You know, you look very like your mother. Around the mouth, especially."

"How can you say that it hurts you to be reminded that he was a philanderer when you were just telling me about fucking with some Egyptian?"

"I did it to spite your father. My heart was never really in it. No, I take that back. There were occasions when I was in love. Jefferson of course. I was completely besotted with Jefferson. But doing the deed among the crocodiles? That was for spite. I did a lot of things for spite."

"And he did the same?"

"Of course. Spite begets spite. He used to have women morning, noon and night."

"And he loved none of them?"

"Are you asking me whether he truly loved your mother?"

I drew a bitter lungful of the cigarette. Of course that was what I wanted to know. But now it came time to ask the question, I was tongue-tied, even a little emotional. And even as I felt the tears pricking my eyes another part of me-the part that's dispassionately setting this account on the page-was thinking: what's all the drama about? Why the hell should it matter, after all these years, what your father felt for your mother the day they conceived you? Would you really feel better about yourself if you knew they'd been in love?

"Listen carefully," Cesaria said. "I'm going to tell you something that may make you a little happier. Or at least, let you understand better how it was between your parents.

"Your mother was illiterate when Nicodemus met her. She was really a sweet woman, I have to say, a very sweet woman, but she couldn't .even write her name. I think your father rather liked her that way, frankly, but she was ambitious for herself, and who can blame her? They were hard times for men and women, but for a woman like her, her beauty was her only advantage, and she knew that wasn't going to last forever.

"She wanted to be able to read and write-more than anything in the world-and she begged your father to teach her. Over and over she begged him. It was like an obsession with her-"