He looked at Summer, a hard smile crossing his face. “My other daughter didn’t react at all,” he said, “because you see, she wasn’t around.”

“What?”

“Katie had run away from home. She’d been gone for two weeks. We’d been worried sick about her at first, but then we’d gotten one phone call. She said to quit looking for her. Leave her alone, Katie said. She sounded high.”

“She ran away?” Summer said. “She didn’t tell you why?”

“She had problems. Christ, she never stopped having problems,” he said, and Summer heard it again, just a hint of what she’d heard during his interview with Quentin, that frustration and rage. Reg had made so many stupid mistakes in his life, though. He’d lost so many people and still he kept on living. Who wouldn’t be angry?

“You know, when we’d gone to church that Sunday, Clara and I both prayed we’d have our family together again. For Father’s Day. God has quite a sense of humor.”

Summer took another sip of water. “When did Katie come home?”

“A few days after Clara died. I couldn’t even look at her. Didn’t ask her where she’d been. The whole rest of her life, I always found it so hard to look her in the eye without my stomach knotting up. I know that sounds terrible.”

“You were hurting,” she said. “Looking for someone to blame.”

Reg took a sip of his water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Summer’s gaze drifted to the kitchen counter behind him. The dusty, empty pasta cylinders, the avocado-green phone with its twisted, old-fashioned cord. And next to it, a pair of sunglasses. Vintage tortoiseshell Ray-Bans. That’s where you left them, Quentin. At your grandfather’s house. She shut her eyes for a few seconds. God has quite a sense of humor.

“It’s the one thing I’ll never understand,” Reg said. “Gabriel had gone to that gas station with the purpose of killing me, and from where he was standing, he easily could have done it. But he didn’t. He didn’t aim the gun at me. He aimed it at everyone else.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I think he knew that letting me live would be worse punishment.”

A tear leaked down his cheek. Summer found herself leaning across the table, taking both his hands in hers. She found herself feeling for him, this scared, stupid, selfish man. What a strange turn this interview had taken—almost as though Quentin had engineered it himself. Closure for someone, anyway, if not for him.

Reg said, “Was he close to his mother?”

“Quentin? He was there when she needed him.”

“That’s good. They had each other.”