At the house, Deschutes was making pancakes—an awkward procedure with only one hand. “I’ll feed you breakfast,” he told Peter, “but lunches are your own responsibility.”

Peter sat down and drank the rest of his coffee. He hadn’t thought he was hungry, but he ate four pancakes with syrup and butter. Deschutes did not eat but instead watched Peter, occasionally drinking from a mason jar of orange juice that smelled strongly of vodka. Rena used to watch Peter eat, when she was on a juice cleanse or was just, to use her words, feeling bloated. She’d follow Peter’s food from fork to mouth, fork to mouth. Peter hadn’t thought twice about it— he’d taken it as a sign of love.

When the food was gone, Deschutes led Peter upstairs. Peter loved returning to a new project, reassessing the details he’d forgotten or misremembered during his time away. But the portrait of Slinky looked exactly as he recalled, every line and shadow in its place. He took his time preparing his tools and mixing his paints—he needed to kill time.

“How did you meet her?” Peter asked.

Deschutes grunted and looked up from the book he was reading, a Farmer’s Almanac from 1977. “Your dad never told you?”

“He never told me anything. I think he was afraid I’d tell my mom.”

Deschutes was quiet for a moment. “She wasn’t a whore, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking she was anything.”

“Good. Because she was a teacher. Eventually she was a dancer— that’s when we met her—but before that she was a teacher. In San Francisco.”

“Why’d she stop teaching?”

Deschutes set his book face down on the floor. “She had an accident—bus hit her while she was riding her bike. Screwed up her brain so she couldn’t keep her numbers straight. And then her body was all banged up so her fiancé left her—said he didn’t want to spend his life fucking an invalid. She had tragedy coming out her eardrums. You could see it when she danced.” He looked at the canvas and smiled. “Obviously, everyone was in love with her. She had a waist so small you could fit your hands around her, and she always smelled like flowers. Not to mention she was smart as hell. Even after the brain damage, she could memorize a page of poetry in one sitting.”

“That’s why you liked her? Because she smelled good and memorized poems?”

“Well, sure. That’s what men liked back then. I see what you’re thinking. The girl I got now—she’s nothing in the way of looks. But she treats me like a house cat and that’s what matters. At this age, it’s about being cared for.”

Peter turned his attention to his painting. He thought of all the things he loved about Rena: How she wouldn’t take a bite of food until she’d offered a taste to everyone around her. How if someone gave her a book she always read it, no matter how much she disliked it. Once, he woke in the middle of the night and found her sitting at the window, watching an incoming thunderstorm. He loved her more for wanting this moment of romance to herself, and yet he’d felt jealous, left out. And now she was gone, experiencing everything by herself, taking the world in without him. She was braver than he was.