Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Lora Dell Blake, in her late forties, was a tall, lanky, restless woman; with close-cropped greying hair; sand-colored eyes and skin; a generous spirit, but a habit of sarcasm. Though she claimed to love Southern California — “You don’t know what paradise is, unless you’re from somewhere else” — she seemed in fact an awkwardly transplanted New Englander, with expectations and a sense of personal integrity, or intransigence, quite out of place here. She was fond of saying she did not suffer fools gladly, and so it was. Overqualified for her position at the Glencoe Medical Center, she’d had no luck in finding work elsewhere, partly because she did not want to leave Glencoe and “uproot” Sybil while Sybil was still in high school; and partly because her interviews were invariably disasters — Lora Dell Blake was incapable of being, or even seeming, docile, tractable, “feminine,” hypocritical.

Lora was not Sybil’s sole living relative — there were Blakes, and Contes, back in Vermont — but Lora had discouraged visitors to the small stucco bungalow on Meridian Street, in Glencoe, California; she had not in fact troubled to reply to letters or cards since, having been granted custody of her younger sister’s daughter, at the time of what she called “the tragedy,” she’d picked up and moved across the continent, to a part of the country she knew nothing about — “My intention is to erase the past, for the child’s sake,” she said, “and to start a new life.”

And: “For the child, for poor little Sybil — I would make any sacrifice.”

Sybil, who loved her aunt very much, had the vague idea that there had been, many years ago, protests, queries, telephone calls — but that Aunt Lora had dealt with them all, and really had made a new and “uncomplicated” life for them. Aunt Lora was one of those personalities, already strong, that is strengthened, and empowered, by being challenged; she seemed to take an actual zest in confrontation, whether with her own relatives or her employers at the Medical Center — anyone who presumed to tell her what to do. She was especially protective of Sybil, since, as she often said, they had no one but each other.

Which was true. Aunt Lora had seen to that.

Though Sybil had been adopted by her aunt, there was never any pretense that she was anything but Lora’s niece, not her daughter. Nor did most people, seeing the two together, noting their physical dissimilarities, make that mistake.

So it happened that Sybil Blake grew up knowing virtually nothing about her Vermont background except its general tragic outline: her knowledge of her mother and father, the precise circumstances of their deaths, was as vague and unexamined in her consciousness as a childhood fairy tale. For whenever, as a little girl, Sybil would ask her aunt about these things, Aunt Lora responded with hurt, or alarm, or reproach, or, most disturbingly, anxiety. Her eyes might flood with tears — Aunt Lora, who never cried. She might take Sybil’s hands in both her own, and squeeze them tightly, and looking Sybil in the eyes, say, in a quiet, commanding voice, “But, darling, you don’t want to know.”

So too, that evening, when, for some reason, Sybil brought up the subject, asking Aunt Lora how, again, exactly, had

her parents died, Aunt Lora looked at her in surprise; and, for a long moment, rummaging in the pockets of her shirt for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there (Aunt Lora had given up smoking the previous month, for perhaps the fifth time), it seemed almost that Lora herself did not remember.

“Sybil, honey — why are you asking? I mean, why now?”

“I don’t know,” Sybil said evasively. “I guess — I’m just asking.”

“Nothing happened to you at school, did it?”

Sybil could not see how this question related to her own, but she said, politely, “No, Aunt Lora. Of course not.”

“It’s just that out of nowhere — I can’t help but wonder why,” Aunt Lora said, frowning, “—you should ask.”

Aunt Lora regarded Sybil with worried eyes: a look of such suffocating familiarity that, for a moment, Sybil felt as if a band were tightening around her chest, making it impossible to breathe. Why is my wanting to know a test of my love for you? — why do you do this, Aunt Lora, every time? She said, an edge of anger to her voice, “I was seventeen years old last week, Aunt Lora. I’m not a child any longer.”

Aunt Lora laughed, startled. “Certainly you’re not a child!”