The physical contact between their palms lasted only a moment and then Max stepped back and looked to their mother.

She was smiling in that vacant way of hers, her eyes softly focused. “And who might you be?”

Even though she’d just seemed to recognize the man?

“Ah, it’s Maxwell, Mother,” Lane said before he could stop himself. “This is Maxwell.”

As he put his hand on that heavy shoulder, like he was a QVC host highlighting a toaster for sale, Little V.E. blinked a couple of times. “But of course. However are you, Maxwell? Are you here for long?”

Now, she didn’t seem to recognize that Maxwell was her son—and not only because he had gone lumber-sexual with the facial hair, but because even the name didn’t seem to register as significant.

Max seemed to take a deep breath. And then he went over. “I am well. Thank you.”

“Perhaps a shower for you, yes? And a shave. We dress for dinner here at Easterly. Are you a close friend of Edward’s then?”

“Ah, yes,” he said remotely. “I am.”

“That’s a good boy.”

As Max looked back like he was searching for a life raft, Lane cleared his throat and nodded to the archway. “Let me show you to your room.”

Even though the guy no doubt hadn’t forgotten where it was.

Lane nodded to the nurse who was hovering in the corner to take over, and then he drew Max into the foyer. “Surprise, surprise, brother.”

“I read about it in the newspaper.”

“I didn’t think we announced the visitation in the CCJ.”

“No, the death.”

“Ah.”

And then there was only silence. Max was looking around, and Lane gave him a second to soak it all in, thinking back to when he himself had returned here after two years. Nothing had changed at Easterly, and maybe that was part of what was so disarming when you returned after an exile: The memories were too sharp because the stage sets had remained unaltered. And, too, except for Edward, the actors were also exactly as you had left them.

“So are you staying?” Lane asked.

“I don’t know.” Max glanced over at the stairwell. Then nodded to the ratty duffel bag he’d obviously just dropped by the open door. “If I do, it won’t be here.”

“I can get you a hotel.”

“Is it true we’re going bankrupt?”

“We’re out of money. The bankruptcy depends on what happens next.”

“So he jumped off a bridge?”

“Maybe. There are some extenuating circumstances.”

“Oh.”

Now Max was once again staring into the parlor, at their mother who was smiling pleasantly up at her nurse as the woman delivered her a seltzer water.

“Is she dying, too?” Max asked.

“Might as well be.”

“And, ah, when does the event start?”

“I’m closing it down.” Lane smoothed his tie. “A reversal of fortune is a social disease with no inoculation. Nobody came.”

“Pity—”

“Where the hell have you been, Max?” Lane interjected. “We tried to find you.”

Max’s eyes swung around, and he seemed to notice Lane for the first time. “You know, you look older.”

“No, shit, Max. It’s been three years.”

“You look a decade older.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m finally growing up. Meanwhile, clearly your goal of turning into a hedge is proceeding apace.”

At that moment, a car pulled up to the front of the mansion, and at first, Lane was too busy thinking of throat punching his brother for disappearing to notice who it was. But as an elegant African-American man got out, Lane had to smile a little.

“Well, well, well, timing is everything.”

Max squinted into the fading sunlight. Instant recollection had his eyes peeling wide, and he actually stepped back as if from a physical blow.

There was nowhere to run, though.

The Reverend Nyce had seen the man who had broken his daughter’s heart into a thousand pieces. And the preacher might have been a godly man, but even Lane, as a disinterested third party, wanted to get out of the way as the guy focused on the degenerate drifter who had come home to roost.

“I’ll leave you two to catch up,” Lane murmured as he headed back for the parlor.

As Edward arrived at the visitation, he didn’t go in the front door. No, he took Shelby’s truck up the back way and parked behind the kitchen wing just as he had the day before. Getting out, he tucked his T-shirt into his khakis, smoothed his hair and was glad he’d bothered to shave. But his bad ankle made him feel like he had an iron ball tethered to his leg, and his heart was beating funny. The good news, though, was that the two draws off a gin bottle before he’d left the Red & Black had evened out his DTs nicely, and although he had a hip flask full of the stuff, he hadn’t needed to hit it yet.

His heart slowed into a more productive rhythm as he approached Easterly’s rear kitchen door, and as the screen creaked when he opened the thing, he caught a whiff of the telltale sweet/bready/spicy smell that took him right back to childhood. Inside, Miss Aurora was sitting at the counter, her heels wedged into the bottom rung of a stool, her apron pulled up to her thighs. She looked old and tired, and he hated her disease with a passion at that moment.

Glancing away so he didn’t get emotional, he saw stacks upon stacks of one-use aluminum pans with fitted tops, the packed-up food evidently ready to be taken to St. Vincent de Paul to feed the homeless and sheltered.

“A lot of no-shows?” he said, going over and taking a peak under one of the lids.

His stomach growled at the scent of her lamb empanadas.

“Is that the way you say hello,” she snapped. “Where are your manners, boy.”

“I’m sorry.” He turned and bowed to her. “How are you?”

When she just grunted, he straightened and looked at her properly. Yes, he thought, she knew why he’d come.

Then again, he might not have been her favorite—Lane held that spot in the woman’s heart—but she had always been one of the few people to read him like a book.

“You want tea?” she said. “It’s over there.”

He limped across to the glass pitcher she pointed at. It was the same one he’d used as a child, the square-bottomed, thin-necked one with the yellow-and-orange flower pattern from the seventies that was getting worn off.