Matthew still didn’t get it. He’d fried a few of his own brain cells over the course of the past years. He narrowed his eyes at me, asking a question.

“Presence of the dead. It’s a real issue for me.”

“Oh, bullshit. You don’t have to pretend. This is me, here. I know you. You can fool other people, evidently, but not me.” Matthew made a face that was meant to let me know that we were all in a big conspiracy together.

“Leave,” Tolliver said.

“Oh, come on,” Matthew said, incredulous. “Son, you’re not claiming this corpse-finding thing is real. I mean, you can pretend in front of other people, but your sister is anything but some kind of occult witch.”

“She’s not my sister, at least not by blood,” Tolliver said. “We’re a couple.”

Matthew’s face reddened. He looked like he was going to throw up. “You make me sick,” he said, and instantly regretted it.

Now nearly everyone we had told had had that reaction, to a greater or lesser degree. If I’d cared about how they felt, I might have been worried about our relationship just about now.

Fortunately, I didn’t give a shit.

“Time to go, Matthew,” I said, easing away from Tolliver. “For a reformed junkie and alcoholic, you’re not very tolerant of other people’s little differences.” I held open the room door.

Matthew looked from me to his son, waiting for Tolliver to cancel my suggestion. Tolliver jerked his head toward the open door. “I think you better go before I get any madder than I am,” he said, in a voice with no emotional weight whatsoever.

Matthew gave me a furious look as he walked by me on his way out the door.

I closed it and locked it behind him. I took a step over to Tolliver, hugged him, and looked up at his locked-down face. “You’d think somebody would be happy for us,” I said, to break the silence. I didn’t know what Tolliver was feeling. Was he having second thoughts?

It was now completely dark outside, and the blank window seemed like a big eye looking into the room, especially since we were on the ground floor. Tolliver gave me a little hug and stepped to the window to draw the curtains. I’d feel better when the night was blocked out and Tolliver and I were alone together.