Peach took both hands and wrapped them around the gun. His hand was cold against her warm fingers. His blood smeared her face. Their eyes found each other, and his eyes were lost and lonely. His skin was bone white, his red hair matted on his head. His whole body trembled.

‘Deacon, stop!’ Cab shouted.

Deacon wrenched away, ripping the gun from her grasp. He threw it into the gutter, where the weapon vanished under the rushing water. Slamming the door, pushing past her, he ran, but it was not a run at all. He tottered like a dirty drunk. Six steps later, he lurched to a stop, and his knees crumbled. He went down, sinking to all fours, and then his left side gave way, and he sprawled onto his back, twitching, spread-eagled. A river washed over him, deep enough nearly to cover his body.

Peach’s breath stuttered in her chest, and she splashed toward him. She got on her knees and slid an arm under his limp neck and held him. His eyes were open but gray. His lips frothed with blood. She was vaguely aware of Cab and Lala drawing close, of them standing over her and touching her shoulder, but she didn’t move. She waited, because the end was near.

She stared into his face, but it wasn’t him she saw. He seemed to become everyone else she’d lost, everyone she’d never had a chance to hold. Her mother. Her father. Lyle. And Justin. Justin, with his porkpie hat swirling away in the water, his mustache drooping, but still with that grin, teasing her, loving her. She wanted to hold on to all of them forever. Keep them here. Keep them alive for another second.

But the man in her arms was none of those people. He was her brother. He was a killer.

‘Oh, Deacon,’ she said, but his eyes had already closed.

55

Chayla had fled.

The clouds scurried after her, leaving the detritus of the storm – cars pushed around like toys, trees downed, roofs torn away – to glitter wetly under a perfect sun. Steam rose from standing pools of water. Fish rotted on streets and sidewalks half a mile inland from the Gulf and the bay. The rumble of back hoes and dump trucks made a whine in the background as the clean-up of the region began.

The elegant landscaping of Diane’s garden had been torn apart. A fallen palm tree lay across the grass, its shaggy top half submerged in the duck pond. A stone flamingo had been beheaded. Bushes were uprooted, and when the mild wind blew, they rolled like tumbleweeds. The floor of the gazebo, where Diane and Cab sat, was dirty with mud and branches.