“He did?” Some emotion flickered in the girl’s eyes—but only for a moment. “I didn’t know he had one. Mom must have given him my stupid school picture. I’m surprised he didn’t throw it away.” She glanced disdainfully around the gallery. “What a bunch of junk!”
The girl was as charming as her mother, Ellie thought wryly. “Your family appears to be completely unanimous in that opinion.”
Karen stared at a chair covered with beads and bits of glass. “Yeah, Mom’s pretty upset. This is going to kill her chance of getting in the Social Register for sure. Are you supposed to sit on this chair?”
Ellie blinked. “No, not really. It’s more for decoration. What does Vogel’s have to do with your mother and the Social Register?”
“That’s why Mom wanted Uncle Garek to start an art foundation. So she could get her name in the Social Register. Uncle Garek thought it was a stupid idea.”
For once Ellie had to agree with him. “I’m surprised he didn’t refuse her request, then.”
“He couldn’t. Mom threatened to screw up some business deal he was working on. Uncle Garek was pretty hot under the collar about it.”
Appalled, Ellie stared at Karen. “How do you know all this?”
“They were arguing about it on Christmas Eve. They argue a lot. Uncle Garek hates my mom.”
“I doubt that’s true,” Ellie said automatically, then paused. “I think he’s just very angry at her for trying to hurt his business,” she said more slowly.
Karen shrugged. “Same difference. He hardly ever comes over to our house anymore.”
“Did he use to?”
“Yeah, when I was a little kid. He took me to the park and baseball games and stuff like that. Once he took me to the symphony.”
“The symphony?”
“Yeah. For my birthday. I was thirteen years old and he bought me a white lace dress with a blue satin bow.” Once more, the cynical expression slipped, revealing pure, naked emotion. For a moment, the girl’s face was full of such wistfulness, such yearning, that Ellie’s breath caught. Then the mask descended once more and Karen sneered. “It was a little kid’s dress. I didn’t want to wear it, but Mom insisted. I hated it and I hated the stupid symphony. All that lame classical music. Uncle Garek stopped coming by after that. He said he had to work.”
Ellie said gently, “That was probably true.”
Karen shrugged again. “Yeah, right. At least he buys good presents. He got me a computer for Christmas, and he bought my mom an emerald and ruby necklace. Actually, I thought the necklace was kind of ugly, but Mom didn’t care. She always returns everything he gives her for the cash.”
Ellie remembered the gaudy necklace with shock. She’d imagined his sister treasuring the ugly jewelry as a sign of his affection—instead, it appeared the woman only cared about the monetary value. Did Garek know? Probably. His anger at his sister obviously went back a long way. But oddly enough, in spite of all the anger and bitterness, she sensed that he really did care about Doreen—
“So what’s the deal here?” Karen asked, bending over to look more closely at a fishbone hung in a frame. “Are you my aunt now, or what?”
Ellie froze. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Uncle Garek are married, right? He told Mom last night. She’s absolutely livid.”
Karen’s warning should have prepared Ellie for the phone call she’d received shortly after the girl left—but it hadn’t. Remembering the unpleasant conversation, she glared at the South American rodent in the enclosure in front of her, then turned her gaze to its North American counterpart standing next to her. “Did you have to tell your sister?” she asked.
Garek slanted a glance at her. “She gave you a hard time, I take it.”
“Did she ever!” Indignation rose in Ellie at the memory. Karen had given her a blatantly skeptical look when Ellie denied the marriage and had left the gallery a few minutes later; Doreen hadn’t been nearly so restrained. “The names she called me! And when I finally got her calmed down enough to explain that the ceremony was invalid, that we weren’t really married, she called me a liar!”
“Sorry about that,” he murmured.
She looked at him suspiciously. “But why did you tell her?”
“It just slipped out.”
Ellie gripped the iron railing. “You’ve never struck me as the type to let things slip.”