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He wheeled out and I followed him to the office. He went to the desk and opened a drawer to take out a checkbook.

"What are you doing?" I asked. He didn't reply. He turned the pages and then he looked up.

"Just as I suspected," he said. "I guess I always had it in the back of my mind, but your mother and Grover seemed so happy together. I didn't want to even suggest such a thing and make you worry more."

"What are you talking about. Evan?"

I came up beside him and he pointed to the record of checks paid. Charlotte had been giving Grover Fleming money.

"I sort of knew that he was one of those Southern gentlemen with a rich name and no bank account," Evan said. "There was a time when he tried to court my mother, but Aunt Charlotte discouraged it. I never liked him much."

"I wish you had told me." I said. He nodded.

"I wish I had. too."

"Well," we heard, and looked up to see Charlotte in the doorway. "And what do we have here?"

Evan closed the checkbook and backed away from the desk. "Why did you do this?" I asked.

"Do what?" She entered the office, with a big, sweet, innocent smile on her face.

"Be the devil and tempt my mother into the abyss of self-indulgence," I said.

"My, my, such dramatic words. Evan, you didn't give them to her, did you?"

"She does pretty well for herself. Aunt Charlotte," he said. "Yes. I suppose she does.'

"Why? Why did you arrange for Grover to hurt her like this? Why did you really bring us here?"

Anger deepened the lines in her face and turned her eves into orbs of darkness and hate.

"Your father destroyed my sister's life. Everything that's happening now is just."

"You're a sick, evil woman." I charged.

"Really? I'm sick and evil?" She smiled and moved closer. "Did I bring this poor child into the world without a father, a child who needs more attention and love than most children? Did I try to buy off my guilt with an occasional check in the mail and keep a poor, innocent girl strung along on promise after promise, lie after lie?"

"But why punish them. Aunt Charlotte?" Evan asked for me.

"She knows. I told her when I first met her," Charlotte said. "The sins of the father are visited on the head of the child.'

"You didn't get to punish him, so you decided to punish them?"

"Justice for you and your mother," she told him.

"You never really knew my mother, knew your own sister. She would hate you for what you've done, hate you almost as much as I do now!" he said.

Her cruel smile of victory turned into a sneer.

"Your mother was always too weak and too trusting. That's why she suffered. There are only two kinds of people in the world. Evan, the strong and the weak. I chose to be the strong. Sometimes, the choice is already made for you," she added, looking down at him. "You should be grateful you have me to protect you."

"Like a rabbit's grateful to a snake." She laughed again.

Then she looked at me sternly.

"I won't blame you if you decide to leave and join your mother wherever she is."

"She's not leaving to join her mother. She's going to a prominent school for the performing arts," Evan said firmly.