Grave Secret Page 0,7

had broken in Tolliver's head, and I was hearing thoughts I'd never heard before, pouring straight out of his mouth.

"Sure, they're limited in their thinking," he said. "But they're the ones who have to cope with Gracie and Mariella, day after day. They go to the teacher conferences; they go to the meetings with the principal; they take the girls to get their shots; and they take them to the doctor when they're sick. They enforce the bedtimes and the study times. They buy the clothes. They'll get the braces." He shrugged. "All that stuff. We can't do that."

"So what do you think we ought to do? Instead of what we're doing?" I stepped out of the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the unmade bed. He followed and sat beside me. I braced my hands on my knees. I tried not to cry. "You think we should abandon our sisters? Almost the only family we've got?" I didn't count Tolliver's father, who'd been in the wind for months.

Tolliver squatted in front of me. "I think maybe we should come for Thanksgiving and Christmas, or Easter, or the girls' birthdays... expected times. Arranged way in advance. At the most, twice a year. I think we should be more careful about what we say in front of the girls. Gracie told Iona that you said she was too rigid. Except Gracie said 'frigid.' "

I tried not to smile, but I couldn't help it. "Okay, you're right about that. Bad-mouthing the people who take care of the girls, that's not cool. I thought I was being so careful."

"You try," he said, and he smiled just a little. "It's the expression on your face rather than your words... most of the time."

"Okay, I get your point. But I thought we would become closer to them if we moved here. Maybe break down some walls between Iona and Hank and us. We'd see the girls more often, and the situation would get more relaxed. Maybe the girls could spend the weekend with us sometimes. Surely Iona and Hank want to be by themselves from time to time."

Tolliver countered this scenario with his own issue. "Do you really think Iona will be able to accept us? Now that we're together?"

I fell silent. The fact that we'd become a couple would shock my aunt and her husband, and that was putting it mildly. I could understand that point of view, even. After all, Tolliver and I had grown up together in our teen years. We'd lived in the same house. My mother had been married to his father. I'd been introducing him as my brother for years. Sometimes I still referred to him as my brother, because it was the habit of years and because we'd shared an upbringing. Though we weren't blood relations at all, there was a certain ick factor in our sexual relationship, to an outsider's point of view. We'd be fools not to recognize that.

"I don't know," I said, simply to be argumentative. "They might just accept it." I was lying.

"You're lying," Tolliver said. "You know both Hank and Iona are going to go ballistic."

When Iona went ballistic, God got mad. If Iona thought something was morally questionable, God thought so, too. And God, as channeled through Iona, ruled that household.

"But we can't conceal from them what we are to each other," I said helplessly.

"We shouldn't, and we won't. We'll just have to see what happens."

I tried to change the subject, because I had to think over everything we'd just said. "When will we see Mark?" Mark Lang was Tolliver's older brother.

"We're supposed to meet him at the Texas Roadhouse tomorrow night."

"Oh, good." I managed a smile, though I'm sure it was a weak one. I'd always liked Mark, though I'd never been as close to him as I'd been to Tolliver. He'd protected all of us as much as he was able. We didn't manage to see Mark every visit to Texas, so I was glad he'd found the time to have supper with us. "So this evening we're invited to Iona's for a brief visit? And we'll just see what happens. We have no plan?"

"We have no plan," Tolliver confirmed, and we smiled at each other.

I tried to keep hold of the smile when we got into the car to drive over to the small house in Garland where our sisters lived. Though the weather was clear and bright, I wasn't seeing blue skies ahead.

Iona Gorham (nee Howe)