“What?” Mack stood suddenly, knocking the TV tray so that his beer bottle fell on its side. It soaked the plate and his sandwich and spilled onto the woven carpet at his feet, which Darren saw were both bare and ashy.

“Now, look, it don’t immediately change anything,” Darren said. “I’ve been working on an angle that will protect you in this thing, I promise you.”

Mack sank back onto a couch that was the color of marigolds gone brown with age. He let out a grunt that sounded almost like a macabre chuckle, a private marveling at some dark joke. “Bre, honey, get on in here. It’s Darren, honey.”

She came from the other room wearing black leggings and an oversize sweater that came down to her knees. She must have been in the middle of braiding her hair, because half of her head was puffed out, as cottony as quilt stuffing, only black and shining with coconut oil. “Yeah, Paw-Paw?”

Her grandfather gave her a stern look and said, “Sit down.”

She did as she was told, taking a seat as far away from her grandfather and Darren as she possibly could while still being in the same room, on that same couch. She wasn’t looking at Darren but down at the comb in her hand. She pulled strands of hair from it and watched as they floated to the carpet below.

“It’s time, child,” Mack said. “Tell the man what you told me.”

Darren looked from one to the other, sensing that the moment had been choreographed, something that they’d been meaning to stage for some time. The clang of bells from the game show filled the air, and then Mack reached for the remote from a side table and turned off the television so that the cabin fell into silence and also grew darker by several degrees. It was only then that Darren realized the curtains were drawn, the rest of the world shut out.

Breanna looked up at Darren and said, “I shot Ronnie Malvo.”

Mack let that hang in the air for a few minutes, let Darren roll the words backward and forward until he felt he’d finally gotten him to grasp what he’d been saying for so long, that there was more to this that Darren didn’t understand. “So you see,” he said, “I’m not the one here who needs protecting.”