I gallantly suppressed a shudder at the idea. “I didn’t think it would be fair to Peppy,” I explained. “If we both got killed or laid up, who would look after her?”

He accepted that grudgingly-and a bit suspiciously-and asked me to tell him again how I’d shot Dresberg. Finally, around noon, I felt I’d stayed long enough and made my escape upstairs. The old man had stacked my mail neatly inside my apartment door, letters in one pile, newspapers in another. I flipped through the letters quickly-nothing personal. Not one thing. Just bills and solicitations. In irritation I tossed the lot, including my home phone bill. The papers would keep-I’d go through them later and see how they’d covered Xerxes.

My rooms had that strange appearance of a place you haven’t visited for a while-they seemed somehow unfamiliar, as though I’d heard them described but hadn’t ever actually seen them. I moved around restlessly, trying to reestablish myself in my own existence. And trying not to wonder what Humboldt might next attempt. I wasn’t entirely successful. At two when the doorbell rang I jumped a little. This has got to stop, Victoria, I admonished myself I walked purposefully to the intercom and pressed it.

Caroline’s voice came tinnily through. If anything were needed to restore my self-confidence, it would be a little roughhousing with her. I prepared myself for battle and buzzed her in.

I could hear her moving up the stairs with a slow, heavy tread most unlike her usual canter. When she made the last turning and came into view, I could see that she looked somber. My heart contracted. Louisa. Tuesday night’s escapade had been too much for her weak system and she’d died.

“Hello, Caroline. Come on in.”

She stood in the doorway. “Do you hate me, Vic?”

My eyebrows went up in surprise. “Why on earth do you ask that? I thought you’d shown up to chew me out for exposing Louisa to so much abuse two nights ago.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. If I’d told you what was going on… You almost got killed because of me. Twice. But all I could do was scream at you like the spoiled little brat you kept telling me I was.”

I put an arm around her and dragged her into the apartment-the last thing I wanted was for Mr. Contreras to hear us and come bounding up. Caroline leaned against me and let me take her over to the couch.

“How’s Louisa?”

“She’s back home.” Caroline hunched her shoulders. “She actually seems a little better today. She doesn’t remember anything that happened, and whatever they shot her full of gave her a better sleep than she usually gets.”

She picked up a copy of Fortune and started twisting it around. “The police came by right after I’d gotten home and found her missing. I’d been at a marathon meeting downtown, you know, going over the recycling stuff with some of the local EPA attorneys. I thought Ma’d had a bad turn, that the neighbors or Aunt Connie had taken her to the hospital. Then when the cops came for me I went a little crazy.”

I nodded. “Lotty told me you’d called yesterday with an angry message. I just didn’t have the strength to get back to you.”

She looked at me directly for the first time since she’d arrived. “I don’t blame you-I was mad enough to spit blood and then some. I was screaming my head off at you while I drove to Help of Christians. But when I got there all I could think of was you and your mother looking after Ma and me all those years. And then I thought of what you’d been through for the two of us just these last three weeks. And I felt terribly ashamed. It never would have happened if I hadn’t pushed you into looking for my father when you didn’t want to do it.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ve been plenty mad at you-probably cursed you worse than you did me. And I’m not exactly wearing a halo-if I’d bugged out when you asked me to I’d never have been left for dead in the swamp and Louisa wouldn’t have been kidnapped.”

“But I don’t think the police would ever have found out the truth,” she objected. “They never would have found Nancy’s killer, and Jurshak and Dresberg would still be ruling South Chicago. I shouldn’t have been such a chicken-I should have told you about the threats to Louisa to begin with, so you wouldn’t get blindsided.”

I knew I needed to tell her about discovering who had gotten Louisa pregnant, but I couldn’t seem to find the words. Or maybe it was just the courage. While I was fishing around for it Caroline said abruptly:

“I bought Ma some cigarettes. I remembered what you said that first night you came by, how they wouldn’t make her any worse and they might cheer her up. And I could see all I was trying to do was have power over her, keeping her from having one thing that might bring her a little pleasure.”

Her last words brought back Lotty’s advice most strongly. I took a breath and said, “Caroline, I have to tell you-I did find out who your father was.”

Her blue eyes turned very dark. “Not Joey Pankowski, right?”

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not. There isn’t any easy way to say this, or to hear it, but it would be really wrong for me not to tell you-a most noxious way of controlling your life.”

She looked at me solemnly. “Go ahead, Vic. I-I think I’m more grown up than I used to be. I can take it.”

I took both her hands and said gently, “It was Art Jurshak. He was your-”

“Art Jurshak!” she burst out. “I don’t believe you. Ma never would have come across him in a million years! You’re making this up, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “I wish I were. Art-he-uh-your Grandmother Djiak is his sister. He used to spend a lot of time with Connie and Louisa when they were little, and the Djiaks chose not to notice that he was abusing them. Your grandparents are both terrified of sex, and your grandfather especially is frightened of women, so they made up a vile fairy tale for themselves that it was your mother’s fault when she got pregnant. Although they did stop seeing Art, it was Louisa they punished. They’re a pretty loathsome couple, Ed and Martha Djiak.”

Her freckles stood out like polka dots against the pallor of her face. “Art Jurshak. He’s my father? I’m related to him?”

“He gave you some chromosomes, babe, but you’re not related to him, not by any manner of means. You’re your own person, you know, not his. Not the Djiaks’, either. You’ve got guts, you’ve got integrity, and, above all, you have valor. None of that has any relationship to Art Jurshak.”

“I-Art Jurshak-” She gave a little bark of hysterical laughter. “All these years I thought your father had got Ma pregnant. I thought that was why your mother did so much for us. I thought I was really your sister. Now I see I don’t have anyone at all.”

She got up and ran for the door. I ran after her and caught her arm, but she wrenched herself free and jerked the door open.

“Caroline!” I tore down the stairs after her. “This doesn’t change that. You will always be my sister, Caroline!”

I stood on the sidewalk in my shirt sleeves, watching helplessly as she drove recklessly down the street toward Belmont.