The Nightgown by Brad Parks Page A

She blinked a few times, glanced up at the ceiling for a second, then looked back at me. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. This has just been so difficult for…my mother.”
    “I understand. And I didn’t mean to be a bother.”
    “You’re just doing your job.”
    “No, actually, this isn’t my job,” I corrected her. “Normally I’m an investigative reporter. This is something I’m doing on my own initiative. If you really don’t want a story done, I’ll walk away right now. Otherwise, I’d like to talk to the people here and get them to say some good things about your sister, which I’m sure won’t be difficult. Would that be okay?”
    Anne actually smiled for the first time.
    “We’d really like that,” she said. “What did you say your name was again?”
    “Carter Ross. Let me give you a card,” I said, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet. I was just pulling out one of my business cards when Nancy’s other sister—who, as far as I knew, hadn’t been following our conversation—suddenly spoke up.
    “I’d like one, too,” Jeanne said.
    I looked at the woman, with her semi-dark glasses and groovy, Berkeleyesque head swaying. Suddenly, I recognized she wasn’t dancing to any music. She had some kind of neurological disease—Parkinson’s, perhaps—which meant she had little control over her head’s wobbling. The movement made her hard to focus on, and I realized my attempts to do so might create the impression I was staring.
    “I’d like a card, too,” she said again, reaching out a trembling hand.
    “Jeanne, no,” Anne said, gently but firmly.
    “I’m her sister, too, and I have a right to say what I want to the reporter,” Jeanne said. Her voice had a monotone quality to it—another Parkinson’s symptom?—yet she was clearly growing agitated, and her volume was rising to indicate it.
    “I know you have a right,” Anne said, making her tone softer as Jeanne’s got louder. “I’m not here to debate your rights.”
    “She’s a lawyer, she’s always debating people’s rights,” Jeanne told me, spitting out “lawyer” in a way that made it clear she wasn’t a friend to the American Bar Association. “Could I have your card, please?”
    I acquiesced, if only because I wanted her to be able to put her hand down—the longer she kept it outstretched, the more it shook. Anne looked disapprovingly at the transaction. The family dynamic was becoming clear to me: there was Anne, the oldest sister, the controller, always trying to maintain order; Jeanne, the middle sister, the free spirit, trying to keep things disorderly; and Nancy, the youngest sister, the worker bee, who had probably just tried to stay out of the way and keep the peace.
    “Jeanne, I don’t know if it’s the best idea for you to—”
    “She doesn’t want me talking to you,” Jeanne told me, ignoring her sister. “She’s afraid I’ll say something embarrassing that will hurt her reputation.”
    “Jeanne, that’s not fair—”
    “Fair? We’re going to talk about fair now? Was it fair that you stayed in law school when Daddy died?”
    Anne’s face flushed red and her jaw locked.
    “About as fair as you running off to California, ” Anne replied tersely, saying “California” with the same kind of vehemence as Jeanne said “lawyer.”
    There’s nothing like a funeral to rip open old family wounds. And this was evidently not the first time these two sisters had gone for blood on this particular topic. I wished I hadn’t stumbled into the middle of it. I needed a few nice quotes about Nancy for my obit, not a reprise of some ancient sisterly squabble.
    “That is not how it happened, and you know—” Jeanne started until Anne’s low-but-fierce voice drowned her out. “If you could have just stayed around for one year instead of going back to your cult—”
    “It was not a cult, it was a—” Jeanne started, but again her voice lacked the strength to compete with Anne, who