Battling traffic on the Cross County Parkway, Quentin thought about April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy—how they’d ruined not only his grandfather and his mother, but ruined him too, turning him into the kind of person who doesn’t let an old man know that his only daughter is dead. Your mother put you up to this, Reg Sharkey had yelled at him. And Quentin hadn’t corrected him. He’d been so full of hate, he hadn’t said a word.

By the time Quentin reached his hotel, he was back to his mother’s overdose—the part that he never allowed himself to think about, the one part of it that he hadn’t told anyone, not even Dean. She’d still been alive when he showed up at the sober house. He had seen her sitting up in bed, her eyelids fluttering—and immediately, he’d known what was going on. It had happened before, twice. He had been angry at the people at the sober house for allowing her access to sleeping pills to the point where she’d been able to hoard them again, angrier still at Kate for planning it this way, right before his weekly visit, as though she were forcing him to save her. Forcing a man to save her, because no man had ever done it voluntarily.

He’d pulled out his phone to call 911, just as he had the other two times, and she’d whispered to him, just as she had then. You’re better off without me. Let me go.

And this time, he had. He never pressed send on the 911 call, didn’t attempt CPR the way he had two other times before. He just stood over Kate, watching the life spill out of her, the way April Cooper had watched Kimmy Sharkey fall to the ground.

Relieved. That’s how Quentin had felt. He may have even smiled.

He had felt that way until she was gone, until he brushed the hair from her forehead and gazed into her glassy, wide-open eyes and thought, What have I done? What kind of person am I?

Quentin got out of the car and walked through the hotel parking lot, his vision thick with tears, not for himself but for Dean, for Summer, for anyone else who was deluded enough to believe in him.

“Mr. Garrison,” the front desk clerk called after Quentin, as he made his way through the antiseptic-smelling lobby to the elevator. Quentin’s cheeks were wet. He was a mess. Whatever the guy had to say to him could wait for later. “Mr. Garrison! Mr. Garrison! Mr. Garrison!”

“What?” Quentin shouted it so loud, his voice went hoarse.

There were a few people in the lobby—a family of three, an elderly couple. They all froze in place staring.

Quentin walked over to the front desk, his head down, his fists clenched. The mother drew her child closer as he passed.