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bright and feverish.
"What do you want?" she demanded, shooting
me a stabbing glance.
Beau rose. "Madame Tate, we've come to try to
reason with you, to get you to understand why we did
what we did," he said.
"Humph," she retorted. "Understand?" She
smiled coldly with ridicule. "It's simple to understand.
You're the type who care only about themselves, and if you inflict terrible pain and suffering on someone in your pursuit of happiness, so what?" She whipped her eyes to me and flared them with hate before she turned to sit in the high-back chair like a queen, her
hands clasped on her lap, her neck and shoulders stiff. "Much of this is my fault, not Ruby's," Beau
continued. "You see," he said, turning to me, "a few
years ago we. . . I made Ruby pregnant with Pearl, but
I was cowardly and permitted my parents to send me
to Europe. Ruby's stepmother tried to have the baby
aborted in a run-down clinic so it would all be kept
secret, but Ruby ran off and returned to the bayou." "How I wish she hadn't," Gladys Tate spit, her
hating eyes trying to wish me into extinction. "Yes, but she did," Beau continued, undaunted
by her venom. "For better or for worse, your son
offered to make a home for Ruby and Pearl." "It was for worse. Look at where he is now,"
she said. Ice water trickled down my spine.
"As you know," Beau said softly, patiently,
"theirs was not a true marriage. Time passed. I grew
up and realized my errors, but it was too late. In the
interim, I renewed my relationship with Ruby's twin
sister, who I thought had matured, too. I was mistaken
about that, but that's another story."
Gladys smirked.
"Your son knew how much Ruby and I still
eared for each other, and he knew Pearl was our child,
my child. He was a good man and he wanted Ruby to
