In the end, it didn’t matter. Once melanoma entered the bloodstream, it became one of the most aggressive cancers. Rounds of invasive testing revealed Trixie’s cancer had already worked its way past her lymph nodes and spread to most of her organs. No amount of carrier blood could reverse that. As she lay at home dying, all she thought about was God and the welfare of her son. Paul, she kept telling him, was a good man. He had served his country and deserved a good life. All he needed was some good, orderly direction. Not just from God but from the second most important person in Paul’s life. Sebastian had given her his word. He would watch over Paul. Help guide him.

Paul, though, had zero interest in real estate. He did, however, have a ton of interest in Sebastian’s other business.

Sebastian obliged, albeit reluctantly. The cat was already out of the bag. Better to manage Paul and keep an eye on him and where he went than to have him poking his nose around where it didn’t belong.

I brought him into our thing—I allowed it, Sebastian wanted to tell Frank. And if I’m being honest, I’m not surprised about what he did today. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew something like this would happen.

“Don’t do anything until I get there,” Sebastian said.

Traffic, finally, seemed to be moving. As Sebastian drew closer to his exit, he thought about what Frank had said, about not being there when Paul got to the Long Beach house.

He’s not my kid, he’d told Frank.

Which was true. He had never adopted Paul—had never had any interest in the job, either, and, as far as he could tell, Paul had never wanted him to fill out an application. Even as a kid, Paul had never been big on talking. Sure, he’d had plenty to say about sports, movies, and his favorite TV shows, maybe the occasional book he read, but anything deeper than that? Sorry, nothing to say.

Same with his feelings. Nothing ever seemed to bother him. Whatever happened to him, good, bad, or indifferent, he never showed his true colors.

“He’s just sensitive. Quiet and insular,” Trixie would tell him. “Insular men are always the most private.”

Sometimes, she would add, “His father was like that.”

Sebastian could count on one hand the number of times Trixie had spoken about Paul’s father. That was how she always referred to him: “Paul’s father.” Like he was a store that had gone out of business. She wouldn’t tell him the guy’s name, just that he split town when he found out she was pregnant, and she always ended the conversation with her mother’s favorite words: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

On paper, everything pointed to Paul being solid. He had never given Trixie much in the way of grief beyond the usual kid shit of not picking up his room or putting away his clothes and his dirty dishes. He rarely got into trouble at school or at home, always got good grades and had plenty of friends, all of them good kids from good families, and, later, plenty of girlfriends—all pretty blondes with the same life ambition of looking good in a bikini. And yet Sebastian had always suspected there was something not quite right with Paul, something that made him different from everyone else.