“This house,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “It was my grandparents’. But it was my house, too. I grew up here. My father…”

She looked down for a moment.

“He was killed when I was six years old. He was shot in a bar. Apparently he was trying to protect somebody. Some woman was getting roughed up and he stepped in to help her. Anyway, I only have a couple of memories of him. Good memories, I guess. Him holding me up in the air and swinging me around. One Christmas when he bought me this big rocking horse. I think it’s still in the attic.”

She looked at the ceiling again.

“And your mother?”

She looked me in the eye. “What about her?”

“I’m just asking. I’m sorry, go ahead.”

“My mother,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “She didn’t exactly get along with my grandparents. I guess it was kinda tough, living with your in-laws after your husband is dead, but she didn’t try real hard to make it work. We moved out once when I was like twelve years old, but, well…”

She stopped.

“What is it?” I said.

“Alex, you’ve got to understand… Some things happened to me back then. I know it was a long time ago, but…”

I waited.

“Some things you don’t get over,” she said. “Maybe you get better at dealing with them. That’s all.”

“What happened?”

“My mother got remarried for a while. That’s when we moved out of here. My stepfather… Well, for now I’ll just say this, eh? He died a couple of years ago.”

“Natalie, did he-”

“He made a lot of money, too-after he left my mother for somebody else. He became some kind of real estate big shot or something. I don’t know exactly. All I know is that Albert DeMarco had a long and happy life. If there’s any kind of justice in that, somebody is going to have to explain it to me.”