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"That’s when Olive was sent away to boarding school," I said

Helen nodded

"Who else knew about the incident?"

"No one Just the five of us Lance and Olive, Bass and Woody anddreadful had happened, but she never knehat it was"

There was a silence Helen smoothed the frayed fabric on the arlanced atthat’s piddled somewhere you haven’t discovered yet There wasshe didn’t want to own up to

"What’s the rest?" I asked "What else?"

She shook her head, her cheeks turning pink in patches

"Just tell me, Helen It can’t un to weep I could see her clas back into the box she’d kept the that I didn’t think she an to shake in a separate dance of their own, a jitterbug of anxiety

Finally she spoke "Lance was lying about the two of theone on for years Woody never knew, but I suspected asher and you never interfered?"

"What could I say? I had no proof I kept theo off to summer camp She’d stay with friends of ours in Maine I never left the that would disappear of its own accord I thought if I called attention to it… I don’t knohat I thought It was so unspeakable A s I didn’t want to pry, and Olive denied the slightest suggestion that anything was amiss If she’d come to me, I’d have stepped in Of course I would, but she never said a word She ht have been the one who initiated the contact for all I knew"

"How long did this go on?" I was having a hard tie of e, she’d clam up

"Lance was obsessed with her almost from infancy He was five when she was born and I was so relieved, you see, that he didn’t resent her It was just hi He’d been the baby so I was de-lighted he seemed taken with her It must have started as childish curiosity and advanced to so else It did end once they were discovered They could hardly toler-ate each other’s coe had been done She had terrible problems"

"Sexual proble "She also suffered deep depressions that would go on forto escape the feelings Play and spend Spend and play That’s how she lived"

Rapidly I sorted through all the things I’d been told, processing the trivia I’d picked up in passing "Olive said she and Bass had a falling-out when he was ho silly I don’t even remember nohat the subject et into when they’ve drunk too et back at her, but it wasn’t about anything Petty teto let the sense of this filter in It had started with Lance, with Wood/Warren, talk of a takeover, evidence of insurance fraud Soht in the same trap When Olive died, I’d assumed it was business-related, an accident It was meant to look like that, but it wasn’t I felt the answer leap at one on "Oh shit," I said "Bass told Terry, didn’t he?"

"I think so," she said, almost inaudibly "I don’t think Terry’s like the rest of us He’s not a well ht to me Even when they met, he seemed ’off’ somehow, but he was crazy about Olive…"

" ’Obsessed’ is the word I’ve heard applied," I broke in "That he worshiped the ground she walked on"

"Oh, he adored her, there’s no doubt of that It was just what she needed and I thought it would all work out She had such a low opinion of herself all her life She couldn’t seeht she deserved a little happiness"

"You oods,’ don’t you? Tainted by what Lance had done"

"Well, she was tainted Who knohat bestial appe-tites Lance had wakened in her?"