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The heated concrete of the large circular driveway has already melted the snow. Back in the nineties, when Poppy had installed it, he’d walked around like he’d invented the technology. “Now we don’t need to pay Terry to plow,” he’d said, chest puffed out. Alex used to think it was magical the way the snow vanished before it even settled. Now the whole setup feels like another example of how the Hartwells have always managed to avoid consequences and to maneuver around and out of anything unpleasant or inconvenient, down to the very weather.

He barely wakes Poppy, just enough to guide him inside. The old man lists against him, all fragile limbs and slow breaths. Alex gets him onto the sofa in the den, tucking a fur blanket tightly around him.

Poppy’s eyes flicker open and meet Alex’s. “You’ve been a good son, Alex.” And within seconds he’s out again. It’s the most direct compliment his grandfather has ever offered him. He’s almost embarrassed by how much those words mean to him, by how much he’s craved Poppy’s validation and any scrap of praise. Alex watches the rise and fall of his grandfather’s chest, trying to reconcile that man lying on the couch with the teenager in that story he just heard. The man who took Alex in and raised him as his own, who built a company that cared for its employees and gave back to the community. The man who also stood by while a young man died, and then robbed that man’s family of justice to save his own ass. All of this is true.

His grandfather’s breath catches and his whole body goes still for a moment.

Alex could help him, could help all of them right now. Poppy doesn’t want to live like this, and he wouldn’t fight if Alex picked up the blue silk throw pillow and placed it gently over his face, smothering the already slow breaths until they faded into nothing. Poppy would welcome it. He’s made that perfectly clear.

The thought is only in his mind for a few seconds before Alex bends over and dry heaves over the oriental rug. What is wrong with him? Jesus Christ.

On his way out of the room, he stops in front of the liquor cabinet and stares long enough to feel the desire well up in the back of his throat. It would be so easy. One drink to take the edge off. One drink to stop the storm thundering through his mind and body. But he doesn’t open it. He turns away like it’s something radioactive.

In the kitchen he finds a half-eaten bag of gummy worms on the counter, which he recognizes as the occupational therapist’s favorite snack. A grown woman constantly munching on candy made him question her professionalism. But as he takes a bite and then another and another, he can see the appeal. The chewy sweetness has a way of taking the edge off. Alex slumps at the kitchen table, slurping red and blue worms down as fast as he can. Then he hears Poppy fumbling around in the hallway.

“Poppy?” he calls out.

“I’m fine. I want to sleep in my own bed. Get out of here and get home before the storm gets worse. Kiss Langston for me. Tell him I love him.”

Alex listens as he heads up the stairs. A door slams.

He’ll wait a bit, just to make sure Poppy gets back to sleep, and to finish the oddly addicting candy. His jaw is as busy as his mind, working Poppy’s words over and over, along with the options here. Wade’s death was horrific, and Alex feels sick thinking about it, but would dredging it all up now help anybody? Wade’s parents must have passed away at this point. And if he has any family left, they’ve spent decades living with a story that already has an ending, if not full closure. Telling them what happened isn’t going to bring them that. In fact, Alex builds the case in his mind now that it could actually bring them more pain. Sometimes reopening the scab hurt more than the first cut.

With each gummy worm he chews, his logic becomes as tight as his overworked jaw. And he’s sure that Simone will see it too. If he leaves soon, he can make it to the Hartwell Grocers near their house, which has an excellent floral department. He’ll get two dozen roses to welcome her home from Detroit and soften her up.

They’ll have one of those nights like they used to have when they were first dating, where they stay up late talking until their throats are dry and they can’t keep their eyelids open with force of will any longer. By that moment they will have talked this all through, dug under every rock, and turned over every issue and feeling and concern. It may be excruciating—Alex sure has some things he’s dreading coming clean about himself—but he can see this is the only way to get to some sort of fresh start between them again. Like when he and Connor jumped into Lake Michigan a couple months ago—a torturous, cleansing baptism that will leave them fortified to decide what to do next. Alex can’t do that without Simone. Other than asking her to marry him, he hasn’t been able to make or execute a single move in his life without her. Is that pathetic, or is that true love? Alex doesn’t have the wherewithal to answer that question. All he knows is that together they can figure this out.

He reaches one last time into the plastic bag of candy and comes up empty. He turns his attention to the collection of pill bottles on the lazy Susan. He gives it a casual spin and watches the bottles turn in an amber blur before stopping the motion with one finger. It’s a bad idea, but better than drinking. Or so his faulty logic goes. Who wants to bother with logic when you just need to shut your brain off for a few hours. He’ll be that much more clearheaded when Simone returns. More faulty logic, but it’s what he’s got. He attempts to twist the top off the bottle of Ativan. The childproof cap is impossible. He takes a breath and tries again. He’s about to tap a little white pill into his hand when he hears it.

A single loud crack echoes through the silence of the house. It ricochets down the hallway, through the kitchen, through him. For a second he can’t move. His mind scrambles to make it anything else. A car backfiring. A door slamming. A weighty frame falling. Anything but what it is.

But there’s no denying the sound.

A single gunshot.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN SIMONE

Simone braces herself as she stands in front of the door to her own house. No amount of deep breathing or mental preparation is going to make coming home any easier. A part of her wishes she could have stayed in Detroit with her mother for another week, another month. All she has to show for this quick escape is a Tupperware container of leftover chili, a hand-knitted scarf Donette insisted she take… and more doubts about her life than ever.

All the lights are off. She calls out for her husband and then realizes his car isn’t in the driveway. She’d been too frazzled to notice. Where is he? She’d texted earlier to remind him what time they were getting in, and he’d written right back to say he had to take Poppy to an appointment, but he’d be home by the time she was.

It’s after Poppy’s early bedtime by this point, but it’s possible Alex decided to stay over. She pictures him availing himself of Poppy’s extravagant scotch collection instead of making his way home like he’d promised and feels her agitation rise once again. All her defenses of her husband faltered under Donette’s forceful, if not entirely invited, opinions. If before her marriage was cocooned in cozy dim lighting that softened everything into a warm glow, her mother had thrown on a floodlight; impossible to mask the imperfections in the hot, harsh glare.

The bedtime routine—and Alex’s absence—at least offers a momentary distraction. She pushes Langston toward his room to get his jammies on and his teeth brushed. He passed out on the short flight home, and she told him it was straight to bed the second they walked into the house.

Of course now he’s wide awake, which always happens when she’s hoping for a speedy bedtime. She reminds herself, as she always does, that this won’t last much longer, that a time will come sooner than she’d like when he will want nothing to do with her before going to sleep.

Once they’re snuggled together under the covers, legs entwined and ready to open his favorite book, Langston clears his throat, a strangely adult habit he acquired from Alex and Poppy that means he wants to tell her something important.

“Everything okay, Lang?”

“I think so,” he says. “Is Daddy coming home?”

“What? Oh, honey, of course. I think he probably fell asleep at Poppy’s or stayed late to help him,” Simone says.

“Yeah,” her son says. He pauses, and in that space of time Simone prepares herself for whatever subject Langston wants to broach. She knows from experience that when he brings something up at bedtime like this, it’s bound to be a doozy, like the time he worked up the nerve to shyly ask her about “boners” when he heard the term from the older kids at school and sensed it was a charged subject. Or his more philosophical questions, which were infinitely harder, if less uncomfortable to answer: Do you know when I’m going to die? Well, that was actually a relatively easy response. Not for a long, long time. She said it with conviction but with a heavy heart, considering all the ways the world isn’t safe for her boy. But the question that he squeaks out now with his cheek pressed against the pillow floors her just the same. “Do you still love Daddy?”

A gut punch, and a reminder that she’s been careless around her son. Kids notice and hear so much more than we ever give them credit for, and she was reckless in her conversations with Donette and how she’s acted around Alex. It’s a failure on her part. Her job is to protect her son from the adult world and all its imperfections.