For a moment I'm quiet, remembering just how bad it was. Jerry says softly, "Baby, you don't have to, if it hurts too much."

"I think I need to. It's been sixteen years, and no has really talked about it. All they told Eva was that she died. I'm glad they told her that much. I wouldn't want her to think that DeeAnn deserted her, she'd never have done that. And I can't really fault them, because it was so horrible. They wanted to spare her. But it's been so hard."

I trail off. Jerry pulls me a little tighter, offering silent support. With his arms braced around me, maybe I can...

"She broke up with Bubba, of course. It couldn't last. I'm just glad they split before he beat her to death." I sigh. "Of course, it's just as likely that he'd have woke up one night, tied to the bed and DeeAnn standing over him with a pot of boiling water."

"Anyway, Eva wasn't more than nine, ten months old when they split up. I was living in a dinky trailer house with an aunt, and somehow DeeAnn and the baby crammed in with us till she could find her own place. I worked graveyards then, and slept days. Or tried to.

DeeAnn went out and left the baby with me an awful lot, and the poor little thing couldn't sleep all night and all day, so I was pretty exhausted. I don't want to say this, but... well, the way DeeAnn was running around..."

"You were more of a mama to her than her mama was. It ain't that uncommon, sad to say. I thought you were pretty attached to her."

"Yes. She's the closest thing to children I've ever had." He kisses my forehead, and gives me an oddly tender look. "My aunt was straightlaced, and she couldn't take DeeAnn's lifestyle, so she and the baby moved out soon. I'm not sure if she ever had a steady home after that. I think she stayed for a few weeks or a few months at a time with friends, acquaintances, friends of friends. Or motels."

"She went back to work at a bar." I pause, then say sadly, "Oh, hell. She danced in a titty bar The family kept hoping she'd get a `real' job. Like mine?" I laugh. "She could make more in one night than I could in a week, with overtime. But she never had any money. It all went to...things. She got me to take her to the clinic, and she had hepatitis. I had to get a gamma goblin shot just in case. Then we found out it was the non-infectious kind. I remember I said, `Jesus, DeeAnn, I would've thought that if you were stupid enough to use, you'd have been smart enough to use clean needles.' And she said, `It's not like I'm hooked. I'm just strung out.'" I tipped my head to look up at Jerry. "I wasn't aware there was a difference. What do YOU think the difference is?"

"Probably that someone who's hooked is hooked, and someone who's `strung out' is hooked, and not admitting it."

I nod. "That's what I thought. Eve went to stay with my mom again, because DeeAnn couldn't care for her. I was in the trailer alone now, as my aunt had moved in with her married daughter. I told DeeAnn she could stay as long as there were no drugs. I only lasted a few days."

I'm starting to feel ashamed again. "She was miserable. She could look after herself, but she felt sick all the time, and she wasn't very nice to be around. She... DeeAnn was abrasive at her best. Sick, she was... was a..."

I stop, thinking how awful I am to have ever thought this. Jerry supplies the word. "She was a bitch, right darlin'? Don't feel too bad thinking that. Sometimes we love people despite themselves."

I nod regretfully. "I'm afraid that's the only word. There was a lot of good in her. She was generous. She'd fight for you, tooth and nail. There was a neighbor once, guy old enough to be my father. He'd known us since I was about five or six. He made a pass at me." I feel a sudden tension in Jerry, hear him grit his teeth. My God, is he angry at that long ago lecher? Jerry knows from personal experience that nothing had really happened. "Over the phone. DeeAnn heard me get upset. She took the phone away from me and tore him a new one."

Jerry relaxes again. "I think I like her."

"She'd have been all over you."

"Wish there was a little more of her in her sister." I put my face against his chest. I'm not going to discuss that with him. I ignore the last comment.

"I went to stay at my grandparents while she recovered. I left her. She started to get better, stronger. I got tired of waiting. Finally I told her I wanted her out, so I could move back in. I told her to go back to work. So she did."

I push my face harder against Jerry's solid warmth. I feel the first tears start to squeeze out. "A couple of weeks later...T he FBI said they think he approached her in the parking lot at the club, flashed a fake badge. He must've told her he was an undercover cop, and she was under arrest. He got cuffs on her. And he took her away. And no one saw her again till a guy out picking blackberries the next morning found her in the bushes alongside a back road."

"Aw, baby..." He starts to rock me.

"I don't know what all he did. I don't ever want to know. I'd go crazy. But he beat her, and he burned her, and he... he violated her. The paper said he whipped her so hard that he left a belt buckle print. She either choked on her own vomit, or she suffocated on a gag. She wasn't strong after the hepatitis. Then he threw her naked out in the bushes, like a dog he'd run over in the road."

I've wet Jerry's shirt, I feel the moisture against my cheek. I'm hitching, my nose is running, but I can't stop. It's like something festering has burst, and the poison is rushing out.

"You know how I found out, Jerry? I was working graveyard. When the papers came in, I'd read them. There was a teeny little squib in Police Beat. Woman's body found. I read those things, because it was in the back of my mind, what with the way she lived, the people she hung with. It didn't worry me much, though. They said she was in her forties, DeeAnn was only twenty-two. I forgot how sick she'd been."

Now he isn't just holding me, I'm holding him. I'm hanging on for dear life. More exactly, for sanity's sake, and the words keep coming.

"And dyed black hair. I remember that. She did it because someone told her guys liked black hair. And her own hair was so beautiful. It ended up looking like a Halloween fright wig. But I thought, the age is wrong. Then the second paper came in, with a more detailed description. They mentioned a tattoo: a rose tattoo on her left breast."

I can't talk for almost five minutes. Jerry holds my head tightly, rocking, whispering to me. He sounds choked, but I can't stop now.

"I was all alone. I didn't know what to do. I knew,but I didn't want to know. I kept hoping. A friend of hers came in, and he said he'd go to the police and see. God, it was so hard waiting. He came back and... and all he did was shake his head. I'm not real clear what happened next, but I ended up sitting on the floor. I think maybe I screamed. I scared the guy. I called my boss and told her. I still didn't get out of there till it was my official time off. I wish I'd just left the fucking place wide open."

"I called and told my stepfather. He was good for something, anyway. He broke it to my mother, and I didn't have to. I went to my Mom's as soon as I could. You know, some things can make you old overnight? I'd like to kill that bastard twice: once for DeeAnn, and once for what it did to my Mom."

"You know, on the way over, I found myself going ninety miles an hour, with tears running down my face. I was flying up on an overpass, and I swear, I thought to myself, 'All I have to do is make a sharp right turn, and it's all over. It won't hurt any more.' Then I thought about Mom, and what it would do to her, and I was moving down the other side, and it was over. But I can see now how suicide happens. If you can't get control at that split second."

"At her funeral... The dress she had on... I could see something like plastic underneath it. She was wrapped up because...of the autopsy. So we wouldn't see what they had done."

I felt a warm splash on my cheek, then another. I looked up to see Jerry wiping his eyes. When he saw that I was looking, he kissed my forehead.

"Her friends came. It was... sweet. Tattoos, beards. One guy wore a suit jacket with jeans and boots, and he prayed in front of her coffin, and crossed himself. They cried."

"At the end of the service, I went up to say goodbye. They'd put things in with her: a ring, a necklace. I touched her hand, and kissed her cheek."

The sobs overwhelm me. "She wasn't there! She was so cold." I look up at him wildly. "I was the one working in the dangerous job. I'd been robbed before. Once with a gun, twice with knives. Nothing happened to me. She died. She was younger than me, she was my little sister. Daddy told me to take care of her, and she died."

He grabs my face and says fiercely. "It wasn't your fault."

"The last time I talked to her was on the phone, and we screamed at each other."

"It wasn't your fault! Dear God, Scribe, you couldn't have protected her any more than you could have pulled her out of the way of a lightening strike. Have you been cutting yourself up over that all this time? You have. No more, do you hear me? It wasn't your fault, and she knows that. Wherever she is, she doesn't blame you, so don't blame yourself."

There is such conviction in his voice. He believes this. Maybe...maybe I can believe it, too. I'm exhausted now, past talking. He doesn't push me. He just holds me.

And I'm content to be held.