Gaspar felt the trembling in his hands, slight at first and then a violent shudder. The nausea was so intense he soaked his pants with vomit, spattered the wooden floor. His long hair stuck to his face. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he was alone. He crept out of the guesthouse, hesitant: outside, the sun was shining, ignorant and idiotic, and he didn’t see Stephen anywhere.

They were waiting for him, they wanted to see him. He had said no. Over the phone, Vicky had threatened to show up at the house without warning. You already tried to push us away and this is how it turned out, this is how it ended. You can come back. No one is looking for you. They know you had nothing to do with what happened to Luis. Don’t ever talk to me about Luis, Gaspar had shouted. Never. Who gave you this number? Tali, Vicky replied, but just then Gaspar didn’t think about her. He thought: I have to call right now to change the number, or just cut off the phone. Pablo argued with less conviction. They wouldn’t come to him if he didn’t want to see them, if he didn’t ask them to. The conversations were tense. Gaspar had cut off the last one and hadn’t answered again. Stephen—that’s what he called him now, as Stephen had asked him to—wandered around the house without saying much, but he listened to what Gaspar needed to tell him. Pablo and Vicky had received compensation from the Other Place—he’d been calling it by almost the same name his father had given it, without realizing. They both had good lives. He didn’t want to ruin them.

“You don’t need them anymore,” Stephen told him. “All this is yours. You decide.”

We went to visit your aunt, Vicky had told him. The man who lives with you told us where she was and we visited her. She wouldn’t let us near your house, and we complied. Gaspar felt another wave of rage. Tali. He remembered her well. His father had never told him she was his mother’s sister, and she had never said so either. Another liar. And why was Stephen going around sharing out information? Anyway, for now, he couldn’t face her. He couldn’t look at Tali or listen to her explanation. She could be his ally, but not yet.

Stephen didn’t abandon him. Gaspar had killed his family and he stayed on in the house, unsteady, meandering, but with no intention of leaving. If he puts a bullet in me one night, thought Gaspar, it’s fair. Still, he felt safe. He wasn’t sure what to do with Stephen, and it seemed to him Stephen didn’t know either whether he should leave Gaspar. For the moment, they had only been capable of resolving practical matters. Going into town to eat. Buying food. Talking, in the bar in Puerto Libertad, a little drunk. Stephen talked about Gaspar’s father evasively and in detail at the same time. They would need to hire workers for the house. Unemployment was so high in the country and in the area that it wouldn’t be hard, but Gaspar remembered a woman who had sung him to sleep, her patchwork apron. He didn’t remember her name, but Stephen did: Marcelina. We could find her. You can do whatever you want. There’s no one to answer to anymore.