“I can walk,” I said, though it was still pretty much a theory.

Tuck squired me up the stairs, unlocked the door and swung it open.

Chester sat waiting in the hallway. There was a faint, greenish glow around him.

I burst into tears.

Tucker muttered something, steered me to the couch and bent over me to look deep into my weepy eyes.

“Booze,” I said.

“You’ve been drinking booze?”

“No. I want to drink booze. Now.”

Tucker nodded, probably relieved that he wouldn’t have to bust me for drinking and driving, went into the kitchen, rifled the cupboards and came back with a double shot of Christian Brothers in a jelly glass. I hadn’t touched that bottle since the last bad bout of cramps, but if things kept going the way they’d been going, I’d be hitting the sauce on an hourly basis.

I took a few sips, holding the jelly glass with both hands. Chester jumped onto the back of the couch and nestled behind my neck, purring. Tucker dragged over an ottoman and sat down, his knees touching mine.

“Start at the beginning and take it slow,” he said.

I knocked back the rest of the brandy and set the glass aside. My nerves, all trying to break through my skin only seconds before, collapsed with dizzying suddenness.

“When I was five years old,” I said shakily, “my half brother shot my mom and dad to death.”

Tucker’s face tightened. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

I drew another deep breath. Let it out.

“Go on,” Tucker urged.

“I was there, but if I saw what happened, I don’t remember. A neighbor found me hiding in the clothes dryer. I was d-drenched in blood. Their blood—”

I gagged a couple of times.

“Easy,” Tucker said, and took both my hands in his.

His strong grasp felt so treacherously good that I immediately pulled free.

“My half brother—his name is Geoff—was arrested that night, according to the newspaper accounts I read a lot later. He confessed, so there wasn’t a trial, and they sent him to a youthful offenders’ program in California.”

Tucker nodded in solemn encouragement when my voice faltered again, but he didn’t say anything. He might have looked like a biker, but he was in cop mode now.

“I saw him tonight, Tuck. At Talking Stick. He sat down at the slot machine next to mine—” I swallowed, pushed my hair back with the palm of my right hand. “It was the Sizzling Sevens.”

A faint grin flickered at one corner of Tucker’s mouth, gone as quickly as it appeared. His eyes were dead serious.

“Are you sure it was him? Not just somebody who looked like your brother?”