“Yes. Gerald is a lot older than my dad-about ten years older. There had been at least a couple of other children born in the years between, but those children had died. They were poor. My grandparents were migratory farm workers.”

He smiled at my look of surprise.

“Yes,” he said. “A hard life. My dad said that when Gerald was barely out of short pants, my grandfather taught him how to ride the rails. They’d go all over the country, looking for farms that needed workers.”

“Are your grandparents still alive?”

He shook his head. “They were killed in an accident on the sugar beet farm. Papa DeMont-that’s what my dad called Gwendolyn’s grandfather-felt sorry for Gerald and my dad, and let them stay in the house they had been living in on the farm. He also gave Gerald a permanent job. I think Gerald was still a teenager.”

“How old was your dad?”

“My dad was very young. Still in elementary school. Gerald wanted him to stay in school, but he dropped out when he was twelve-he was already hopelessly frustrated with it because he couldn’t read. He wasn’t stupid-in fact, when I think of all he had to do to cope with his illiteracy, his strategies for hiding it… well, that’s another story.”

“So he went to work on the sugar beet farm.”

“Yes. I guess Papa DeMont saw that my dad could learn in other ways and took him on as sort of a challenge. My dad used to swear that was how he got his real education-following Papa DeMont around, listening to him talk, watching him work. My father had a natural ability with plants, so I don’t think Mr. DeMont regretted hiring him as a gardener.”

He cast a quick glance at me, trying to gauge my reaction.

“I don’t remember much about your parents’ home,” I said, “but I do remember the beautiful plants and flowers. I think my mother was jealous of her sister’s gardens-Arthur’s gardens.”

His brows drew together, and he looked away again. After a moment, he said, “Your husband-Frank?”

“Yes.”

“You said he planted the garden in your backyard?”

“Yes. Unlike me, he has a green thumb.”

He smiled. “My father didn’t pass his abilities on to me. I like Frank’s garden. When will he be back?”

I shrugged. “Soon, I hope.”

I called to the dogs, who were getting a little too far ahead of us. “I’ve forgotten now-how old was Gwendolyn when they married?” I asked.

“Forty-five. My dad was sixteen.”

“She was almost thirty years older than Arthur.”

“Yes. They were already friends. I never learned a lot about their marriage, but he did tell me that he was her only real friend. When Papa De-Mont-her grandfather-died, she was grief-stricken. I guess she did seduce my father, but he said he thought she turned to him because she was so lonely, so sad. He never seemed to feel angry at her about it.”

“But he came to regret marrying her?”

“I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it. By the time he married my mother, Gwendolyn was about fifty. He was twenty-two. He said he fell in love with my mother when he was old enough to know what it meant. He said he loved her then, and he would love her all of his life. I believe that-I think that was the truth.”

He stopped walking and turned to me. “I don’t really know the truth about why he stayed married to Gwendolyn. Sometimes he said it was because she was so lonely, and he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her. Sometimes he said he loved her in a different way. Once he told me he owed her a kind of debt-one that money couldn’t repay. He told me that he was still paying on that debt, but wouldn’t explain what that meant. Another time, he just said it was too complex to explain, and we should just get on with our lives.”

I didn’t say anything, but with his next sentence, he spoke the accusation I had held back.

“It could have been that he wanted the money,” he said, “and that divorcing her would have meant giving up a fortune.”

“Do you think that’s it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to believe that’s why, but I don’t know. He didn’t like talking to me about her, or his life with her, or her money. But I never got the sense that his reluctance to talk about her was because he hated her; it was the habit of keeping those worlds separate, I suppose.

His marriage to her was always divided from his life with my mother and me.“

I whistled for the dogs, who were wrestling with one another a short distance behind us. Deke and Dunk broke apart, then went barreling past us.

“Your parents were separated,” I said, “but he was with you on the night of the murder?”

He hesitated only slightly before saying, “You’ve seen the scars-the old ones-on my hand. My father was at our home when I cut myself. He carried me into the emergency room. If you don’t believe me, there are all kinds of people who witnessed that.”

“I’m not accusing you of having lied about that night,” I said.

He smiled a little.

“I’m not,” I insisted. “I just wondered what he was doing over there if Aunt Briana was so hurt and angry.”

“He missed us. He needed us.”

“He was trying to patch things up?”

“No,” he said slowly, considering the question. “I think he was trying to accept the fact that his whole world was falling apart, but he wanted it to fall apart a little more slowly.”

“But the investigation brought you back together?”

“Briefly. Technically, the investigation is still open, of course. But even when the case was actively being investigated, Harold Richmond always refused to believe there was any possibility of another suspect. That was another reason he got demoted-he just didn’t do enough to investigate other suspects.”

“So he kept pursuing your dad.”

“Right. He added to my mother’s misery. He would corner her when she was, say, out shopping. During hours I was in school. He’d start out cajoling, then he’d get frustrated and angry with her-sometimes he was drunk. He’d tell her that he knew she had been paid off to lie for my dad, or tell her that he knew my folks had plotted to kill Gwendolyn, and that my mom had better not try to get back together with my dad.”

“Why didn’t she want her name on that restraining order?”

He shook his head. “She said Richmond was part of her penance. No priest ever assigned it, of course. It was her own idea. She spent a lot of years punishing herself.”

“For what?”

He looked down at his hand and shrugged.

I waited.

“For sleeping with a married man.”

“She didn’t know he was married!” I protested.

“Then for still wanting him, I suppose. For having brought shame to her family. For having a bastard child.”

“I don’t believe that she was ever ashamed of you.”

“How would you know?” he asked.

“Are we back to that again? All right, because I saw how much she wanted you before you were born. Because-”

He held up a hand. “Okay, you’re right. Maybe she wasn’t ashamed of me. Not of me, personally, but she was ashamed that I wasn’t legitimate. She blamed herself for my being a bastard. Every time I got in trouble at school for fighting someone over it, it was her fault-all her fault, she would say.”

“But Richmond wasn’t really a part of that. Why did she decide he was her punishment?”

He stared at his bandaged hand again. When he looked over at me again, he seemed to be studying my face.

“What?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The night of Gwendolyn’s murder. Do you really want to know the answers to all your questions? What if it means your aunt Briana helped Gwendolyn’s murderer to escape? Or that your newly rediscovered cousin is also an accessory after the fact?”

I didn’t answer right away. “Maybe you did something wrong when you were very young. Maybe you didn’t. I don’t know. I do know someone tried to kill you last night, and I’m also certain that the hit-and-run accident that killed your mother was no accident at all. That’s what concerns me now. And yes, it all seems to have something to do with Gwendolyn DeMont’s murder.”