ened around the envelope

eight. His eyes burned. His skull throbbed. The apartment's sil

ousness be

f grief pulling him backward, into memory, into the

a

cold, seeping through his thin black suit, climbing his spine. He was standing

His fathe

son t

ugh for three. Her dress was designer, her heels sinking into the sodden

mewhere distant, somewhere younger. "He asked

ridian deal. The hospice bills were forty tho

wning. Rain soaked his hair, his shoulders, ran down his collar in icy rivers. "He died alon

as his own, but harder. Colder. "Tears don't cover medical debt. Presen

remember moving. The device was in his palm, then against the

athered nearby gasped. Someone said

t the ruined pho

ead sideways, rocked him back on his heels. His mouth filled with

onal. "No more family money. No more family name. If yo

red onto the

called at all. He didn't look back. He walked until his shoes filled with water, until he reached th

ng ma

n's eye

and blank and dry. His cheek rested against th

houlders. His left hand rose, touched his cheek where Elianna'

been

ving, desperate for someone to blame. Elianna had made herself the perfect target.

her comfortable. She'd carried the weight he'd

told her he was sorry for the things he'd said, the years he'd wast

by the window, and knelt before the bottom shelf. His fingers found the box

kinny and sunburned, grinning at the camera. Fifteen-year-old Elianna behind h

their father got sick. Before money became weapon and s

r's face. The glass covering the

ry," he

n the empty apar

ock chimed.

ld have already compiled her list of failures and inadequacies to review in front of

dn't st

ute in this apartment with its ghosts and its silence and its e

someone else f

s of motor oil he'd wiped on it hours ago. He couldn't wear that. Not today. He shoved it into the back of the closet and pulled out a clean charco

dscape painting. The combination was his father's bi

with a sound like a perio