Go claim her," she said. She looked as if she were going to end our conversation, so I repeated my original question.

"But why do you hate your own son, my father?

Because he married his cousin and had me?" I ventured.

She regarded me with a cold, hard stare. "You think you're old enough for the truth?" she challenged.

"Yes," I said, my heart pounding, my breath so thin I could barely utter the word.

"Your mother grew up here, had the best of everything. My husband spoiled her just the way my father had spoiled my sister. All Haille had to do was bat her eyelashes at Samuel and he'd do her bidding: buy her the dress and jewelry, permit her to go out when I had already said no and on and on. I warned him about her, but he wouldn't listen. She was the little girl I had never given him. Just like all men, he thought he was supposed to spoil his little girl. They confuse flooding them with gifts and their kisses of thanks and hugs as love.

"She had boyfriends. Dozens of boys marched through this house, followed her everywhere, came at her beck and call, groveled for her kisses. Every time I forbade something or punished her for something, Samuel overruled me, and what was the final result?

The hand that fed her was bitten."

She paused. The telling of the story was exhausting her emotionally and physically. She sipped some lemonade and shook her head.

"What do you mean, the hand that fed her was bitten?" I asked after she had rested.

"Just like her mother before her, she slept around, and what do you think? She got pregnant, too.

With you! Then she did the unforgivable thing."

Grandma paused as if to get up enough breath and strength. "She blamed Samuel. She stood before me in this very house and claimed my husband, her stepfather, had slept with her and made her pregnant.

Samuel was devastated, but I told him he deserved it for what he had done all those years."

I shook my head.

"I don't understand," I said, the tears filling my eyelids.

She laughed a wicked, short laugh.

"What's there to understand? She thought if she blamed Samuel, she could escape blame herself."

"But my daddy-"

"Your father, my son, turned on his own father.

Chester turned on me," she said. "He took her side, believed her, actually believed his own father could have done such a thing. Can you imagine the heartbreak I endured, sitting there in that house and hearing my son tell me he believed that-that whore and not his own father? Can you? I told them both to get out, and as long as he took her side, to stay away. I told him I would have nothing more to do with a son who turned on his own parents that way. He knew Haille's background, but he. . . She beguiled him, too, just as she beguiles everyone she touches.

"Jacob was heartbroken as well. He couldn't believe his brother would do such a thing. They had a terrible fistfight on the beach behind this house and never spoke again."

I shook my head.

"None of this can be true. Why did my mother bring me back here?" I cried through my tears.

Grandma smiled and nodded.

"Why? She wanted to get rid of you, dear, and she knew about Sara's loss. Sara's always been a kind person.

She was willing to take you in, and Jacob, God bless him for his kindness, too, wants to do nothing but what will make Sara happy again. Haille took advantage of someone in this family once more. It's that simple.

"I kept quiet about it," she continued. "After all, you are my sister's granddaughter, and, remembering the promise I made to my father on his deathbed, I didn't oppose it as long as I didn't have to set eyes on your mother."

I sat there, shaking my head. It had to be more lies, lies built on lies.

"My daddy never treated me as anything but his own daughter," I said. "He loved me."

"I'm sure he did. If he only had remembered his love for his mother and father as well," she said.

I stared at her, trying to make sense of it, slowly realizing what it meant if what she was saying was true.

"If my daddy thought that Grandpa Samuel was my father then . . . he knew he wasn't my daddy," I concluded.

"Precisely," Grandma Olivia said with some renewed energy. "And yet he still ran off with her, he still took her side and turned his back on his own mother and father."

"But. . . who is my father?"

"Take your pick. It could be anyone," she said dryly. "Maybe someday your mother will tell you, only the truth leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. She can't stomach it."

I continued to shake my head.

"I don't believe my daddy wasn't my daddy," I insisted.

"Suit yourself." Grandma Olivia sipped the rest of the lemonade in her glass. "You demanded I tell you the truth and I have. You said you were old enough and I believed you. If you want to continue living in a world of illusions and lies along with your mother, be my guest, only don't come around here accusing anyone of anything.

"What you should do," she said, standing, "is get your mother to come back for you and bear up to her own responsibilities. But I wouldn't get my hopes up." She gazed down at me. "As long as you behave, do as your told, pull your share, Jacob won't throw you out of his house. They tell me you really are a good student, so if you deserve it, I'll see that you get an education. I'll do it for my father, because of the promises I made."

"I don't want anything from you," I said bitterly.

She laughed a laugh that reminded me of glass shattering.

"In time, I'm sure you'll change your mind about that. Just make sure you don't do anything to change my mind about being generous," she warned, pointing her small, crooked little forefinger at me.

"That includes making my son and his family unhappy. I'm going in now to wash up. If you want, I'll have Ralph, my handyman, take you home."

I sat there, my shoulders shaking, the sobs rattling my rib cage and throwing a terrific chill over me. I embraced myself.

"I don't have the time to stand here and watch you become hysterical," she said. "When you're finished, come into the house and I'll see to it you're taken home."

She started away. I looked out at the ocean. The heavier cloud cover was making its way toward shore and the wind had grown in intensity, lifting the whitecaps. For a few moments the monotonous way in which the ocean waves slapped the rocks hypnotized me. Terns screamed. I tried to shrink into that small hiding place in my brain where I could feel safe and unafraid, but that place felt like a cage.

I hate Cape Cod, I thought. I hate being here another moment. I rose quickly, but I walked slowly, pensively toward the front of the house. When I looked back, I thought I saw a curtain part and Grandma Olivia gaze out, but the sun dipped behind one of those heavy oncoming clouds, and the shadows that fell over the house darkened the window and, like black magic, changed it into a mirror.

When I reached the highway, I didn't turn toward town. For a long time, I just walked, feeling mesmerized. Cars and trucks whizzed by, but this time their closeness, the breeze in their wake, the loud horns that blared-none of them bothered me.

My daddy wasn't really my daddy. He could be anyone. Is that what Grandma Olivia had said, with spite? How could Mommy have left me drifting in such a hellish place? She really was selfish. I didn't want to believe the terrible things Grandma Olivia had said about her, but in my deepest soul I knew it all made sense. If I honestly faced up to what and who Mommy was now, I would have no trouble believing who and what she was back then. But to make such a disgusting claim, to blame my grandfather for my existence. . . I almost sided with Grandma Olivia and Uncle Jacob.

I don't know how long I walked or how far I actually had gone before I heard a continuous horn blaring and turned to see Cary in his father's pickup.

He pulled to the side of the road behind me and hopped out.

"Where are you going? I've been crazy with worry. Everyone has, even Grandma Olivia."

"She told me the truth, Cary," I said.

The sky had become almost completely overcast. The wind was even stronger and the temperature felt as if it had dropped a dozen degrees. I had been shivering without even realizing it. Cary quickly peeled off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.

"Come home," he said.

I shook my head and backed away from him.

"That's not my home, Cary. Your father is not my uncle and your mother is not my aunt."

"What are you saying?" he asked, a confused, half-silly grin on his face.

"Just that. My daddy was. . my daddy-"

"What?"

"He wasn't my daddy. Mommy was pregnant with me by someone else and she accused-" I had to swallow first before I could continue. "She accused Grandpa Samuel. Daddy believed her and that's why they stopped talking to him. Your father and-my--"

It suddenly occurred to me who he was. "My stepfather had a fistfight on the beach and never spoke to each other again. You didn't know that?"

I saw from the expression on his face that he knew something.

"I knew that they'd had a fight, but I never knew why," he admitted.

"Why didn't you tell me that?"

"I didn't want you to hate us and leave," he confessed.

"Well, that's what I'm doing. I'm leaving this place." I turned and started away. He caught up and took me by the elbow.

"Stop. You can't just walk down this highway."

"And why not? I've got to go home," I said.

"I've got to see Mama Arlene and Papa George."

"You're going to walk back to West Virginia?"

"I'll hitchhike," I said. "I'll beg rides. I'll do chores to get people to give me lifts or money for bus tickets. But I'll get home. Somehow, I'll get there," I said, my eyes seeing him, but looking beyond and seeing the old trailer house, Mama Arlene waving goodbye, Papa George smiling at me from his bed, and Daddy's grave, the tombstone I had hugged with all my heart before I was forced to leave. "Somehow,"

I muttered.

"Won't you come home and get your things first? Have a good meal?"

"I don't want to eat and I don't care about those things," I said. "Tell Aunt Sara I'll send this dress back first chance I get," I added and started walking again.

"Wait a minute, Melody. You can't do this."

I kept walking.

"Melody!"

"I'm going, Cary. Not you, not anyone can stop me," I said, full of defiance and anger. I walked and he was silent for a few moments. Then he caught up and walked alongside me. "Why are you doing this, Cary? You can't stop me."

"I know. I'm just thinking about it."

I stopped and turned to him.

"What do you mean?"

He thought and then nodded his head, "All right." He dug into his pocket and came up with a money clip stuffed with bills. "I'll drive you to Boston and give you the money you need for your bus ticket."

"You will?"

"Of course, I will. I'm not going to let you walk down Route Six and hitchhike, and I can see you are determined. Wait here. I'll go back and get the truck."

"But your father will be furious, Cary."

"It won't be the first time or the last, I imagine.

He's already going to be mad about my taking the truck," he added and shrugged. "Don't worry about me."

He ran back to the truck and drove up to rne. I got in and we started down the highway.

"It's a long trip back to Sewell, West Virginia, Melody."

"I know, but it's the only real home I've ever known where there are people who love me."

"There are people who love you here," he said.

He turned and smiled. "May and me for starters."

"I know. I'm sorry about May. You'll explain it to her. Please."

"Sure. But who will explain it to me?"

"Cary, it was horrible, sitting there and hearing the story and seeing Grandma Olivia's anger. I never felt more like an unwanted orphan," I explained.

He accelerated.

"She shouldn't have done that. She should have made something up, something more sensible, something that wouldn't have upset you this way."

"More lies? No thank you. I've been brought up with lies. I've eaten them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's time for the truth. It's time to get back with people who don't know what lying is."