"How can I write-"

"Or indeed you."

"Let me finish, will you? How can I write about this family-particularly the recent history of this family-and not write about the Gearys?"

"They're scum, Eddie. Human scum. And vicious. Every one of them."

"That's not true. Marietta. And even if it were, I say again: what kind of bowdlerized account would this damn book be if I didn't include them?"

"All right. So just mention them in passing."

"They're part of our lives."

"They're not part of mine," she said fiercely. Her gaze came back in my direction and I saw that she wasn't so much enraged as sorrowful. I was revealing myself as a traitor with my desire to tell the story this way. She measured her next words with great care, like a lawyer making a pivotal argument.

"You realize, don't you, that this may be the only way people out there get to know about our family?" she snapped, showing me a glimpse of her temper.

"All the more-"

"Now you let me finish. When I came in here suggesting you write this fucking book, it was because I had this feeling-I have this feeling-that we haven't got very long. And my instincts are rarely wrong."

"I realize that," I said quietly. Marietta has prophetic talents, no question. She gets them from her mother.

"Maybe that's why she's looking so haggard these days," Marietta said.

"She's feeling what you're feeling?"

She nodded. "Poor bitch," she said softly. "And that's another thing to consider. Cesaria. She hates the Gearys even more than I do. They took her beloved Galilee."

I snorted at this nonsense. "That's one sentimental myth I intend to lay to rest, for a start," I said.

"So you don't believe he was taken?"