Grave Sight Page 0,86

hoped she was asking him, not us. At least the light had made the storm retreat in my forest of fears. Tolliver gently set the glass apple on a table by the kitchen doorway.

"Sybil, I couldn't let them know." He was trying to sound reasonable, but it just came out weak.

"That's what you said before, when you made me call them. I still don't understand."

Tolliver and I might as well not have been in the room.

I noticed for the first time that Sybil had a scarf tied to one wrist, and the other wrist was deeply scored with a red line. He'd had her tied up.

"Where's Nell?" I croaked, but neither of them answered. They were so focused on each other, we weren't even on the same planet. I noticed that Tolliver silently bent to retrieve Paul's gun where it lay against the baseboard. The gun looked horribly functional in the expensive, feminine room, which right now was not looking its orderly best. Tolliver slid the gun under the skirt of the couch. Good.

"Sybil, we were together for so long," Paul said. "So long. You'd never divorce him. You'd never even agree to quit sleeping with him."

"He was my husband, for God's sake!" she said harshly.

"So when Helen divorced that bastard Jay, she..." Paul looked at the carpet as if it covered a secret he needed to know. "We got close."

"You had an affair with her," Sybil said, absolutely stunned. "With that low-class drunken slut. After you denied it to my face! Harvey was right."

I risked a look at Tolliver. He met my eyes and we exchanged looks.

"I knew Dell was really my son," Paul said. "But Teenie was mine, too."

"No," said Sybil, shaking her head from side to side. "No."

"Yes," he said. But his eyes were straying now and again to the gun. Sybil was holding it pretty steady, for now. Tolliver and I had edged away from Paul, naturally, not wanting to be in the line of fire, but now I wondered if we shouldn't have kept hold of him, and possibly Tolliver should have bashed him with the glass apple, just to be sure. The lawyer was getting his spirit back, the longer Sybil talked to him without shooting him.

"You could have just told them," she said. "You could have just told them."

"I did tell them," he said. "That day they died. I did tell them." His voice was unsteady, as shaky as Sybil's.

"You killed them? Why'd you kill your son, our son?" Tears were running down her cheeks, but she wasn't ready to crumple yet. I'd been right when I'd pegged her as stoic.

"Because Teenie was pregnant, you stupid cow," he said, retreating to a more comfortable emotion, anger. "Teenie was pregnant, and she wouldn't have an abortion! Said it was wrong! And your son, our son, wouldn't make her!"

"Pregnant! Oh! Oh, my God. How did you find out?"

"From me." A bedraggled Nell stood in the doorway. She had a letter opener in her hands, and her wrists held the same red marks that her mother's showed. "I'm the most stupid person in the world, Mama. I was so worried about Teenie being pregnant that when Dell told me, I thought I'd ask Paul to talk to her, tell her to give it up for adoption. Dell was too young to get married, Mama, and I just didn't want to be Teenie Hopkins' sister-in-law. So they died! He killed them, Mama, and it's all my fault!"

"Don't you ever think that, Mary Nell. It's his fault." Sybil gestured with the gun toward her longtime lover.

It seemed to me it was sort of Sybil's fault, too, but I wasn't going to raise any issues as long as she was holding the gun. While I was being ignored, I wanted to put a safer distance between me and Paul Edwards, so I was edging back to the far end of the couch. On Edwards's other side, Tolliver was shifting himself a little closer to the two women, but he was careful to keep the line of fire between Sybil and Paul free and clear.

"Yes, it's my fault," Paul gabbled. He was looking around the floor surreptitiously. He was looking for his gun. Paul Edwards was not down for the count.

"You need to tie him up," Tolliver suggested. "Call the police."

Nell began to move back through the doorway, presumably to go into the kitchen to call the police, but Paul made a sudden move and she stilled.

"No, don't call," Paul