Page 129 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
Kateri grinned.
“Why do I care?Your mother… and my father. He was a respected man of the community. He didn’t love my mother, but at least she had her position as his wife.” Lilith glared as if Kateri were guilty of every kind of crime. “And then you.You!We found out about you. So unlike him. Such a lack of control on his part. When you came to live with us, I was in high school. Do you know what my friends said? About me having an Indian sister?”
“Native American.”
Lilith kept rolling. “Out of control. Savage. Without the slightest smidgeon of civilization or education. I washumiliated.”
“You’re holding a grudge about what happened in your high school? That was more than twenty years ago!”
Lilith went into her martyr act. “You have no sensitivity to my finer feelings.”
“Finer… feelings!” Kateri sputtered. “You… you locked Merry Byrd and me in the basement and left us to die!”
“Don’t exaggerate. It was only a couple of days.”
“Youdidn’t let us out. We figured out how to get ourselves out.” Kateri reined in her temper. “This is squabbling. This is stupid. How did you get in here? Into my house?”
“That’s not important.”
“I promise it is.”
“I may have helped myself to a key while we were at the quilting group.” Lilith managed to sound lofty, as if she had managed some noble mission.
Outraged, Kateri shouted, “Youstolemy back door key? Sure. Why not? You trashed my house. You trashed Rainbow’s house. You think nothing of breaking and entering. Why would you stop at stealing?” She took a breath, calmed herself and in a reasonable tone asked, “What did you think I was going to do with the marriage certificate?”
Lilith grew deadly calm, looked down, removed a piece of lint from her sleeve.
Illumination struck. Kateri smiled in the moment of revelation. “You thought I would challenge his will.”
“There is money involved,” Lilith pointed out.
Kateri felt herself descend to the level of out-of-control savage without the slightest smidgeon of civilization or education. “I don’t want his dirty money.”
“Of course not,” Lilith mocked. “You’re too noble for that.”
“Let us be clear here. I didn’t know there was a marriage, much less a marriage certificate. I didn’t know I had the paperwork.” Kateri realized she was shouting again. “And even if I had known, I wouldn’t have handed it over to you.”
“Why not?” Lilith wore that tucked-in lips, snottily superiorI told you soexpression. “If you’re not going to challenge the will, why wouldn’t you give it to me?”
“Because you neveraskedfor it.” Kateri found herself flapping the certificate at Lilith. “I knew when you showed up here you were up to something, but you never told me what. Why is everything in your family so shrouded in secrecy?‘Don’t look in the attic, Kateri.’ ‘Don’t touch the raven, Kateri.’ ‘Don’t look at the books in the library, Kateri.’It’s like some stupid game you’re always playing andI can’t figure out the rules.”
With that laser focus that marked Lilith’s personality, she asked, “Will you give me the marriage certificate?”
“Why should I?”
Lilith reached into her purse, pulled a pistol, a Glock 43 and pointed it at Kateri. “Because I said so.”
Kateri wavered between scornful laughter and sheer terror. This was the woman who had shut two little girls into the cellar and left them to die. At the same time, her hair was perfectly groomed, her makeup was flawless, and she held the pistol limply, negligently, as if the weight hurt her wrist. But…
Looking up into those cold blue eyes, Kateri decided that terror was the logical emotion.
What she didn’t count on was her own overwhelming wave of fury. “You bitch. If you had ever asked, I would have given you this. I would have thrown it at you to get it out of my house. But oh, no. Like everything else in your family it’s all games and guessing and sneaking around and hiding the truth.”
“We’reyourfamily, too.”
Kateri gestured widely, ridiculously. “I came into that Baltimore mansion too late to learn all thatcrap.”
“You learned more than you think. Do you think you could have succeeded as you have if you had remained here your whole life, dealing with an alcoholic mother, a lackluster education and all the lowered expectations of being raised on a Native American reservation?” Lilith knew exactly how to strike at the truth, at Kateri’s pride. “I don’tthinkso. I went out to your rez. That place is a cesspool.”
