Summer pulled two glasses out of the cupboard, plastic ones with the Anaheim Angels logo on them, both of them as dusty as everything else in the house. She rinsed the glasses, dried them with a kitchen towel, and filled them with water from the tap. The kitchen towel was clean and white, with little strawberries across the bottom. It looked as though it had never been used, and it was hard to imagine Reg Sharkey doing anything with it, that delicate piece of cloth in those scarred, meaty hands. Summer imagined the towel was part of a set his wife, Clara, had bought, before their kids were even born.

When she returned with the glasses, Reg took his quickly, but instead of drinking, he held it to his forehead. “Hot in here,” he said. Although it wasn’t. For all its dust and old appliances and ’70s décor, the place had a good, strong central air-conditioning, which had been turned up high enough to ease some of the pain of Summer’s hangover. She gulped her water, until her glass was nearly empty while Reg watched her, waiting.

“Ready?” she said, and when he nodded, she turned the recorder on again.

Reg started talking right away. “His face was red—a true red, like a tomato. He wouldn’t stop. There were people screaming and crying but he didn’t seem to hear. He just kept shooting. And that girl. That awful April. She just stood there . . .”

“Mr. Sharkey.”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you bring Kimmy?”

He put the glass down.

“I mean . . . had you ever brought her to meet Linda before?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then why—”

“It was Father’s Day. I was only going to talk to Linda. Tell her it wasn’t a good day for me.”

“I still don’t understand.”

He exhaled hard. “She made me,” he said. “Clara made me. She said, ‘Look, if you’re just getting some gas, why not take Kimmy? You know she loves that mural.’ She didn’t say it like a suggestion, though. She may as well have said, ‘Take Kimmy, or else.’”

“So you did what she said.”

“We were having a lot of trouble at home. I think she might have figured it out about me and Linda, I don’t know. But yeah. Yeah, I did what she said. To . . . keep the peace.”

Summer took another swallow of water, lukewarm and metallic, and carefully set the glass down, the truth sinking in. This was why Clara Sharkey had killed herself—not because she couldn’t live without Kimmy. Because her jealousy and anger had led to Kimmy’s death. So much guilt in one family. So many secrets that Quentin had never known. “What about your other daughter?” Summer said. “How did she react to her sister’s death?”