Taltos by Anne Rice Page A

like it was her daughter?”
    He didn’t answer. He just continued to look off, and gradually the hurt and trouble slipped away from his face, and he chewed his lip for a second, and then almost smiled.
    “Never tell anyone that part,” he whispered. “Never, never, never. No one needs to know. But someday, perhaps, she’ll want to talk about it. Perhaps it’s that, more than anything else, that’s made her silent.”
    “Don’t ever worry that I’ll tell,” she said. “I’m not a child, Michael.”
    “I know, honey, believe me, I know,” he said with just the warmest little spark of good humor.
    Then he was really gone again, forgetting her, forgetting them, and the huge glass of gunk, as he stared off. And for one second he looked as if he was giving up all hope, as if he was in a total despair beyond the reach of anyone, even maybe Rowan.
    “Michael, for the love of God, she will be all right. If that’s what it is, she’ll get better.”
    He didn’t answer right away, then he sort of murmured the words:
    “She sits in that very place, not over the grave, but right beside it,” he said. His voice had gotten thick.
    He was going to cry, and Mona wouldn’t be able to stand it. She wanted with all her heart to go to him and put her arms around him. But this would have been for her, not him.
    She realized suddenly that he was smiling—for her sake, of course—and now he gave her a little philosophical shrug. “Your life will be filled with good things, for the demons are slain,” he said, “and you will inherit Eden.” His smile grew broader and so genuinely kind. “And she and I, we will take that guilt to our graves of whatever we did and didn’t do, or had to do, or failed to do for each other.”
    He sighed, and he leaned on his folded arms over the counter. He looked out into the sunshine, into the gently moving yard, full of rattling green leaves and spring.
    It seemed he had come to a natural finish.
    And he was his old self again, philosophical but undefeated.
    Finally he stood upright and picked up the glass and wiped it with an old white napkin.
    “Ah, that’s one thing,” he said, “that is really nice about being rich.”
    “What?”
    “Having a linen napkin,” he said, “anytime you want it. And having linen handkerchiefs. Celia and Bea always have their linen handkerchiefs. My dad would never use a paper handkerchief. Hmmm. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”
    He winked at her. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. What a dope. But who the hell else could play off a wink like that with her? Nobody.
    “You haven’t heard from Yuri, have you?” he asked.
    “I would have told you,” she said dismally. It was agony to hear Yuri’s name.
    “Have you told Aaron that you haven’t heard from him?”
    “A hundred times, and three times this morning. Aaron hasn’t heard anything, either. He’s worried. But he’s not going back to Europe, no matter what happens. He’ll live out his days with us right here. He says to remember that Yuri is incredibly clever, like all the investigators of the Talamasca.”
    “You do think something has happened?”
    “I don’t know,” she said dully. “Maybe he just forgot about me.” It was too dreadful to contemplate, it couldn’t have been that way. But one had to face things, didn’t one? And Yuri was a man of the world.
    Michael looked down into the drink. Maybe he would have the brains to see it was flat-out undrinkable. Instead he picked up a spoon and started to stir it.
    “You know, Michael, that just may shock her out of her trance,” Mona said. “I mean, while she’s drinking it, right at that very moment, when half the glass is sliding down her throat, just tell her in a clear voice what’s in it.”
    He chuckled, his deep-chested, fabulous chuckle. He picked up the jug of slop and poured a full, egregious glass of it.
    “Come on, come out there with me. Come and see her.”
    Mona hesitated.