I shrugged. I didn’t care to tell Aunt Greta anything about Cordelia.

“How can you have anything to do with her?” Aunt Greta hissed at me.

“She’s not her father,” I retorted.

A knowing look crossed her face. “Is she…like you?”

“She’s a decent, caring person,” was the only reply I made.

“Oh. And well-to-do. That family has lots of money. I see how you can associate with her.”

“You’ve given me your news, Aunt Greta. Please go.” I wanted to yell at her, just scream, “You don’t understand. You don’t. You never did.” But she wouldn’t understand.

“I don’t really blame you, Michele, for how you turned out. I know you were influenced, corrupted by that woman.” Aunt Greta was referring to Emma.

“That’s not what happened,” I retorted, turning away from her. I wanted to get away, to leave Aunt Greta in the past. Not to ever give her the power to disappoint me again. I noticed that Emma and Cordelia were watching us. As close as they were, they could probably hear every word. Aunt Greta had never met Emma.

“What business did that woman have taking a young girl into her house?” Aunt Greta insinuated. “What did she want with you anyway?”

“I was leaving your house on my eighteenth birthday. Whether I had a place to go or not,” I shot back. We wouldn’t connect, but we couldn’t back away either. We would argue, the same rage rattling around in its empty cage. “Emma didn’t want anything of me.” I would be defiant, Aunt Greta would try to break my defiance.

“No one believes that,” Aunt Greta retorted.

Emma stood up. “I’m Emma Auerbach,” she said with a controlled quietness I’d never seen in her before.

“Well,” Aunt Greta huffed, giving Emma an appraising look.

“What are you accusing me of, Mrs. Robedeaux?” Emma asked softly.

Cordelia got up, standing beside Emma. I noticed that Father Flynn and Sister Ann were still in the room. I hadn’t seen Elly or Millie leave. They were both still probably behind me. Aunt Greta, too, noticed our audience.

“My adopted niece,” she said, “when she was living with me, went to mass twice a week, got A’s in school, was required to do housework every day, and was always in her bed by ten p.m. But something happened once she left my house. She was…seduced into a corrupt lifestyle. I couldn’t stop it. She was eighteen by then.”

“I don’t seduce children, Mrs. Robedeaux,” Emma said. “What choices Michele made were her own.”

Aunt Greta, from the safe vantage point of moral superiority, stood looking at Emma. I recognized the turn of her mouth. She had looked at me that way so many times.

We’re going to play this game again, I thought. Aunt Greta, the self-sacrificing martyr battling against evil and corruption. It was her favorite role and I was her favorite battlefield because I wasn’t enough of her child that she could be blamed for my fall from grace. I was infuriated at her dragging in Emma and Cordelia with her ugly insinuations.

“The wrong choices,” Aunt Greta spat back. “Under your watchful influence.”

Fine, let’s play this out. It was time for me to be a defiant, disobedient child.

“You’re wrong,” I told Aunt Greta.

“Don’t bother protecting her.” She jabbed a finger in Emma’s direction.

“I’m not. If you don’t believe anything else I say, believe this—I was sleeping with women long before I met Emma. In bed by ten o’clock, out again by ten thirty. Too bad you weren’t astute enough to notice all the mornings I came to breakfast hungover. Or high. If I went to mass, did the dishes, and got decent grades, you didn’t give a shit what I really did.”

“Michele, I’ve told you, I don’t blame you. You don’t need to behave like this,” Aunt Greta said. “And watch your language,” she added, more for Father Flynn’s sake than mine, I suspected.

“You don’t blame me? I blame you. I blame you for being a self-righteous hypocrite who couldn’t be bothered seeing anything you didn’t want to see. I—”

“Michele! That’s enough,” she berated me.

No, not this time. It won’t work anymore. I’m thirty now, not thirteen, and Aunt Greta doesn’t have Uncle Claude’s belt to back up her demands. A rage welled up from that little girl who didn’t grow up. Suddenly, the only thing I wanted was to fight back. “You ought to be thankful that I slept with women. At least I wasn’t pregnant by the time I was seventeen. Now, wouldn’t that have been embarrassing for you, if both Mary Theresa and I—”

“Michele! I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this from you,” Aunt Greta cut in.

“Nothing. You’ve done nothing. You’ve been a blameless, put-upon woman your entire life,” I yelled at her. My hands were trembling with rage, some monster had been let loose. “Hey, do you remember Mrs. Linden, a Godly and righteous woman, you told me? When she canceled that prayer breakfast with you? She wasn’t too busy. She just didn’t feel like facing you after having had sex with me the night before.”

“That’s an outrageous lie,” Aunt Greta bellowed.

“She had a mole on her upper thigh and her pubic hair was blond, so you were wrong about her dying her…”

That was punctuated with another “Michele!” from Aunt Greta.

But she couldn’t stop me, couldn’t shut me up, couldn’t punish me later. Power. She no longer had any over me. Revenge offered itself to me. I took it with no remorse and no care. “The first time I smoked dope was when Bayard gave me some. I was twelve at the time. He thought it would be funny—”

“That’s an evil lie—”

“—be funny to see his little cousin, excuse me, adopted cousin, get shit-faced. He was dealing in college, you know.”

“She is not a well child,” Aunt Greta said, starting to walk away, but Emma and Cordelia were in her way. “See what you’ve done,” she sputtered at Emma, turning her humiliation into accusations.

“Just wash your hands, you goddamned little Pilate,” I yelled at her. “Not your problem, not your fault, you didn’t see, you didn’t know. You didn’t see…anything, did you?” But I couldn’t say that. I spun away from her, striding to the corner of the room, until the wall confronted me. I hit it with my hand.

“Shh, don’t do that,” Elly said, standing beside me. She took my hand in both of hers, preventing me from hitting the wall again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aunt Greta replied. She backed away, pushing between Emma and Cordelia. “You’re disgusting,” she said to Emma as she brushed past her.

“Mrs. Robedeaux,” Emma called after her, “I don’t suggest you repeat your insinuations unless you have proof to back them up.”

“I won’t be threatened by a woman like you,” Aunt Greta retorted.

“No, Mrs. Robedeaux,” Emma softly answered, “I won’t be threatened by a woman like you. When Michele came to live with me, I gave you several thousand dollars, as a supposed payment for expenses. I had no legal obligation to do so, my lawyer advised against it, but I felt it would…ease things for us all.”

Aunt Greta stood staring at Emma, tightly clutching her purse. She made no reply.

“Let’s be blunt, Mrs. Robedeaux,” Emma continued. “I bought you off. I can only wonder, if you indeed have the reservations you claim, why your complicity was purchased for a few thousand dollars. What does that make you look like, Mrs. Robedeaux?”

“It’s late, I must be going,” Aunt Greta said, her lips pressed in a hard white line.

“How much money did you make off of her?” Cordelia suddenly demanded angrily, marching toward Aunt Greta until she was only a few feet away. “Don’t you remember the money my grandfather sent you? To make up for what my father had done? Five hundred dollars a month until she turned twenty-one. But you just acknowledged that Michele left your house when she was eighteen. What happened to that money, Mrs. Robedeaux?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aunt Greta replied.

“The lawyers for my grandfather’s estate will know,” Cordelia retorted.

“It was for…expenses,” Aunt Greta sputtered. “You wouldn’t understand,” she finished up hastily.

“No, I don’t guess I would,” Cordelia replied.

Then we all stood and stared at each other for one long, awkward moment.

“Come along, Greta,” Father Flynn said. “Remember, ‘ye without sin can cast the first stone.’” He sighed, then started to hustle Aunt Greta out.

“You know, Michele,” she said, briefly looking in my direction, “your Uncle Claude would really like it if you would visit sometime. It’s not nice of you not to come out and see him.” And then she was gone.

“Surely there must be better secretaries than that woman,” Emma commented.

“But not cheaper ones,” Sister Ann replied.

“Are you sending your lawyer after her?” Emma asked Cordelia.

“It’s tempting,” Cordelia replied.

“Yes, it is,” Emma added.

“No, let her be,” I surprised myself by saying. Cordelia and Emma both turned to look at me. “She’s…I want her out of my life. Don’t go after her on my account,” I finished.

“I may go after her on my account,” Emma answered. “That was an ugly accusation. Perhaps a letter from my lawyer will teach her to control her tongue better, if not her thinking.”