Lunette nodded numbly.
“I need to hear it from your lips.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Grandma nodded once. “You have every reason in the world to be happy, Lunette—no matter that you had a baby out of wedlock; it’s been happening since biblical times, and it’s not going to stop any time soon.”
“It’s not that.” Lunette spoke into her designer blouse.
“Excuse me?” Grandma cupped her hand around her ear.
Kenzi couldn’t stand to see her sister brought to shame. She scooted forward on the chair. “Lunette, you started drinking right after Hattie was born. If it wasn’t having her that started all this, what was it?”
Raquel rubbed Lunette’s arm. Kenzi envied their physical and emotional closeness.
“It was you,” Lunette said.
“Me?” Kenzi pointed to her chest.
In a sudden bout of courage, Lunette was on her feet, her face blotched with anger. “You!” she screamed. “You hate me!”
Taken aback by her outburst, Kenzi fumbled for words. “I don’t hate you.”
“Don’t think I don’t see the way you look at my daughter—like she should have been yours.”
Kenzi got to her feet. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Lunette ripped the pillows off the couch and hurled them across the room. One of them wedged in the gas fireplace. Thankfully, it was summer and the fireplace was cold.
“What do you want me to say?” Kenzi asked desperately. “That it wasn’t a jerk move to sleep with Clyde? That my sister of all people should have had the decency to stay away from my fiancé?”
“See—you hate me.” Lunette began to sob. “I can’t take it back. And I wouldn’t, because that would mean that Hattie wouldn’t be here, and she’s the only one in this family who really loves me.”
Raquel shot to her feet. “That’s not true.”
Lunette rounded on her. “I heard you talking to Kenzi. You guys thought I was asleep, but I heard you. You don’t think I’m fit to be a mother.”
“Lunette.” Raquel spoke as if trying to calm a hectic, frightened calf. “We’re worried that Clyde would find out about your drinking and take Hattie away. We love her and we love you, and we want to keep our family together.”
“Why? All we do is hurt each other. I miss my own daughter’s birthday party, and you two are at each other’s throats over Dad’s will.” She flailed her arms about. “Even Grandma comes over to tell us how awful we are.”
“Now listen here,” Grandma started.
“No. You listen.” Lunette pointed right at Grandma’s golden locket. Kenzi and Raquel gasped in unison. No one talked back to Grandma Treekle. “You can’t come over here and tell me I have everything in the world to be thankful for. You don’t know my life, and you certainly don’t know my shame. If I want to drown myself in rum, I’ll do it, and there’s not a thing you can do to stop me.”
“Lunette,” Kenzi breathed in shock. Surely Grandma’s heart was too weak to take that kind of abuse.
All at once, the fight left Lunette and she turned mournful eyes on Kenzi, her chin tucked low. “Maybe it would have been better if you’d had Hattie instead of me.” With that, she tore from the room.
Raquel sighed. “I’ll watch her tonight.”
Kenzi followed her progress out of the room and then pivoted to face Grandma.
The old woman nodded once. “Well, that went about as well as I’d hoped.”
“You wanted Lunette to fall apart?”
“I wanted her to admit there was a problem.” She rubbed her knobby hands together. “That’s the first step.”
