They’d lived together since Lyle was killed. Back then, Lyle had been their surrogate father. She and Deacon hadn’t really been close during those years, because Deacon was an angry kid after their parents died. Angry at them. Angry at Lyle. Angry at the world. To Deacon, who was six years older, Peach was an annoying little girl, and he was a teenager with better things to do. That changed after Labor Day. At age eighteen, with money they inherited from Lyle, he bought a little house in Tampa, and Peach moved in with him. Caprice hired him to work at the new foundation. When Peach turned eighteen four years ago, she joined the foundation, too.

‘Go on,’ Deacon repeated. ‘I’ll see you at home. Make some tater tots or something.’

‘Yeah, okay. See you later.’

Peach pushed herself out of the chair and navigated the maze to her own cubicle. The desk was uncluttered, and the monitor was dusty. There wasn’t even a calendar on the cubicle wall. She had three photographs pinned up with thumbtacks. One was of Lyle next to his new Mercedes, in August of that last summer, looking fussy and proud. The other was of Deacon, two years back, on a Sunday outing to Honeymoon Island on the Gulf. Sunglasses, no shirt, tanned and fit. The last picture showed a man not much older than herself, with a pork pie hat, a handlebar mustache like a cartoon train robber, and a mock scowl for the camera. He was tall and beanpole skinny, with arms folded across his scrawny chest. He wore baggy jeans and a T-shirt showing The Scream.

Justin.

She got up and went to the next cubicle and sat down in his chair. There was nothing in the small space to remind her of him anymore. They’d taken everything away. The computer was new. The drawers were empty. They’d even removed the poster of Mozart on the wall and the kitten calendar she’d given him for Christmas. All that was left was his voice in her head.

Justin on Florida. It’s the cockroach capital of America. And there are lots of bugs, too.

Justin on money. My parents have money, and they’re the unhappiest people you’ll ever meet. They keep sending me money, because they want me to be unhappy, too.

Justin on poetry. The greatest poem ever is Blake’s ‘The Tyger.’

Justin on sex. Nothing screws up love faster than sex. So if we never have sex, we’ll always be in love.

They never had sex.

‘Hello?’

Peach looked up when a voice interrupted her memories. A Hispanic woman in her mid-thirties stood in the opening of the cubicle. She held a cup of coffee in her hand and wore black glasses that looked straight out of Clark Kent and the 1950s.

‘Who are you?’ Peach asked.