I was sure that (entirely coincidentally) Matthew also wanted money and maybe a place to stay. I wondered if Mark truly believed his father, if he could really be that foolish.

Tolliver didn’t say a word.

“Has he been in touch with your uncle Paul or your aunt Miriam?” I asked, struggling to fill the silence.

Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. I never call them.”

While it wasn’t technically true that Tolliver and I were each other’s only adult family, with the exception of Mark it might as well have been. Matthew Lang’s siblings had been hurt and disgusted too often by Matthew to want to maintain any relationship with him, and unfortunately that exclusion had spread outward to include Matthew’s kids. Mark and Tolliver could have used help—could have used a lot of help—but that would have entailed dealing with Matthew, who had been too difficult and frightening for his more conventional siblings. As a result, Tolliver had cousins he barely knew.

I wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about Paul’s and Miriam’s self-preserving decisions, but he’d never made any attempt to contact them in recent years, when Matthew had been safely behind bars. I guess that spoke for itself.

“What’s Dad doing?” Tolliver said. His voice was ominously quiet, but he was holding together.

“He’s working at a McDonald’s. The drive-through, I think. Or maybe he’s cooking.”

I was sure Matthew Lang wasn’t the first disbarred lawyer to work the drive-through window at a McDonald’s. But given the fact that while I’d lived in the same trailer with the man, I’d never seen him cook beyond popping something in the microwave, and I’d never seen him wash a single dish, that was kind of ironic. Not enough that I’d bust out laughing, though.

“What happened to your dad, Harper?” Mark asked. “Cliff, was that his name?” Mark felt it was time to point out that Matthew wasn’t the only bad dad around.

“Last I heard, he was in the prison hospital,” I said. “I don’t think he knows anyone anymore.” I shrugged.

Mark looked shocked. His hands moved involuntarily across the table. “You don’t go see him?” He actually sounded amazed at my heartlessness, which I found almost incredible.

“What?” I said. “Why would I? He never took care of me. I’m not going to take care of him.”

“Wasn’t it okay before he started using drugs? Didn’t he give you a good home?”