Twenty-eight years on, the adult Luke Rickard remembered the coldness in his gut at Etienne’s words. He could see the pale boards on the floor, the freshly scrubbed floor, a couple of darker spatters that Etienne had missed. He had looked up at the big unshaven face that filled his vision and he had spoken a single word. “Yes.”

He was a child back then, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew that his mother hadn’t run away, but she had abandoned him. Her drunken rages had pushed away Luke’s real father and a succession of other surrogates before Etienne arrived on the scene. Luke hated her. She was cruel and unloving. She thought her needs came before all others, and she had been ready to show Luke how he got in her way with the flat of her hand or with the green-stick switch she kept by the front door. Well, Etienne had stood up to her, and now he was showing his true side, a kindness to a boy who’d never known its like.

The cold feeling in Luke’s belly had roiled and squirmed. It felt like he would be sick, but he wasn’t. Saliva had invaded his mouth, as though something pushed up from inside seeking release, but that was as far as it went. He’d swallowed down, then leaned into the embrace that Etienne offered.

And there the serpent was born and his education began.

They moved from Oregon to North Carolina, exchanging one remote home for another that was even further removed from prying eyes. Luke loved the woods and the mountains, but he always held on to a yearning for the sea, which he’d only ever seen on TV. Someday, he’d told Etienne, he would be rich and he would own a house overlooking the ocean. Etienne had laughed at him, told him that he’d better find a way of making good money. And then he’d shown him how.