“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.

“Are you sure they aren’t alive, in the Other Place? They can’t come back?”

“You’re sure, too. There’s nothing left of them. That place was starving.”