The beep of the heart monitor, the buzzing recessed light above Uncle Gavin’s head, the soft tread of the nurses in their sneakers as they hurry down the hall, all of it sets me on edge. My jaw hurts, and I realize it’s because I’m clenching my teeth hard enough to crack a walnut. I don’t want to look at my uncle lying there, so I find myself staring at a picture hung on the wall across from him. It’s a shitty mauve watercolor that will probably be the first thing Uncle Gavin sees when he opens his eyes. Why can’t they get some decent art on the walls, or a photo of the ocean or something? Jesus.

I flinch when Ethan takes my hand, and when I stare at him he gives me an exhausted smile. “I hate hospitals too,” he says.

I drop his hand and pace to the door, then back again. It’s a short trip, but I need to move or I’ll start screaming. “He said something to me about peaches,” I say. “Uncle Gavin.”

Ethan frowns. “Peaches?”

“Before the EMTs loaded him up in the ambulance. He whispered it to me.”

“What does it mean?”

“How the hell should I know?” I’m stalking now, three steps to the door, whirl, stalk back to the bed, repeat. Pretty soon I’ll start waving my hands around like a lunatic. The nurse will have to call the orderlies, big meaty guys who don’t talk, just immobilize the patients, waiting for restraints or for a doctor or nurse with an injection. I’ve faced their kind before. “Maybe he was picking up a delivery at the airport.”

“We’re in Georgia,” Ethan says in his didactic high-school-teacher voice, like I’m one of his students. “Who would send peaches—”

“Yeah, we’re the Peach State, I get it, I was born here too. So maybe he was sending some.”

“Sending peaches. From the airport.”

“You’re right, Ethan, I’m just a fucking nutjob babbling out of my ass over here.”

“Susannah—”

“What?”

“Mierda,” Frankie mutters, and we all stop and look at him. He’s leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. He raises his eyes to mine.

“He didn’t mean the fruit,” he says. “Peaches is a man.”

“What man?” I say. “Who is he?”

Frankie sighs. “His real name is Antoine Daniels, but he goes by Peaches. He bankrolled Li’l Whizz back when he was getting started.”

I look blankly at Frankie. “Who’s Li’l Whizz?” I ask.

Frankie blinks. “Um, the hip-hop star? Won a bunch of Grammys? He’s, like, a midget?”

Caesar clears his throat. “I think the appropriate term is ‘little person,’” he says.