They tried to ask Miss Theo more questions, but the momentum was gone. She told them more about Reggie than they really wanted to know, something about the family crest that they didn’t understand, about his stepmother getting strangled by an irate tax evader and his father getting struck by lightning while using the toilet—thereby ending all hope of Reggie having brothers and sisters. Miss Theo seemed to think this was a good thing, Reggie’s side of the family being even more useless than was “normal.” Though she did concede that Reggie was less useless than she’d expected, given his maternity, paternity and jail time. When she left, Mickey and Delaney were both exhausted.
Delaney stared at the ceiling, his hands behind his head. “She did warn us, you know. She said we didn’t speak Seymo
