The drive into Dallas was easy, with only a few traffic snarls. We had to find Mark’s house, which we’d visited only once before. Mark was a solitary man, and I wondered how he and Matthew were getting along together.

To my surprise, Mark’s car was parked in the little driveway. His home was smaller than Iona’s, which made it mighty small indeed. I automatically noted the buzz around the neighborhood, and it was faint. No dead people here.

There was a narrow raised strip of concrete running from the driveway to the front door. There were cobwebs on the lighting fixtures on either side of the door, and the landscaping was nonexistent. It looked like a house that the owner didn’t care about.

Mark answered the door. “Hey, what you two doing over here in my neck of the woods?” he said. “You come to see Dad?”

“Yes, we have,” Tolliver said. “He’s here?”

“Yeah. Dad,” Mark called. “Tolliver and Harper are here.” He moved back so we could step inside. He was wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt. Clearly, he wasn’t going in to work today. He caught me looking. “Sorry,” he said, “it’s my day off. I didn’t dress for company.”

“We didn’t give you any warning,” I said. The living room was almost as basic as Renaldo’s: a big leather couch and matching chair, a big-screen TV, and a coffee table. No lamps for reading. No books. One picture, a framed one of the five of us kids, taken at the trailer. I had forgotten there was one of all of us.

“Who took that?” I asked, surprised.

“Some friend of your mom’s,” Mark said. “Dad packed it away with the other stuff when he went to jail. He just got it out when he got the stuff out of storage.”

I stood looking at the picture, tears in my eyes. Tolliver and Mark were standing side by side. Mark wasn’t smiling. Tolliver’s lips were turned up slightly, but his eyes were grim. Cameron was by Mark, and she had her arm around him, and she was holding Mariella’s hand. Mariella was smiling; like most very little kids, she’d loved to have her picture made. I was holding Gracie, and she was so little! Which Gracie was it? Gracie after the hospital.

“This was taken not long before,” I said.

“Not long before what?”

“You know,” I said, astonished. “Not long before Cameron was gone.”

He shrugged, as if I might have meant something else.

We were still standing when Matthew came in. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. “I’ve got to get to work in an hour, but it’s great to see you,” he said to Tolliver, then turned his face so his smile could include me.

Thanks, but no.