She thought again about Gavin’s message. She liked being missed, she thought as she reached, despite herself, to sweep the needles free from Silas’s brow.

“Thanks,” she said, turning toward the house. “This was fun.”

Like most broken marriages, theirs hadn’t broken all at once. Instead, it became gnarled the way wind gnarls a tree on a cliff— with quiet pressure, relentlessly the same. And she knew, the way the tree that strains at a sharper and sharper angle knows, that a thing can grow even under terrible circumstances, but that doesn’t mean it should.

“Wait, Lil,” he said. “One quick thing.”

She turned around and pushed her hair behind her ear so she could see him clearly, aglow against the setting sun over the lake.

“Is the Gavin you’re fucking Sarah Kelly’s brother?”

PEYOTE

EVAN WAS THE FIRST Harrison to surprise me. The three before him came naturally to their fate, hungry but never humbled by it. They wanted money, power, a name that would carry on—lives lived in homage. The bread and butter of the Deals Department. But Evan was different.

Evan was the first Harrison I knew to make a deal for the sake of another.

When Evan called for me seventeen years ago, it was raining. Or maybe it had stopped raining by then, or hadn’t started yet. I don’t remember. I just know the air was all juicy and dark, a drunk kiss of a night. When I arrived, he had a cup of tea ready.

“How can I help you, Evan?” I asked.

“You know me?”

“You can assume I know everything.”

Evan rolled his shoulders, his hands steepled around his tea.

“I’m prepared to make a deal with you, but I have one question first. Can I trust that you will answer me honestly? Do you know how to do that?”

There was something about being in front of Evan after watching him for so long—it was kind of like meeting the actor who played your favorite character. You’ve been thinking about them as yours to watch, to know. You never wonder what they would think of you. I understand why: it hits all the harder when they don’t like what they see.

“Yes, Evan. I’m familiar with the concept of honesty. I can do that.”

Evan nodded, his eyes down. The crickets outside made a blanket of sound like we were being tucked in real tight.

“How did you know about me?”

Evan smiled, and I saw the way the wrinkles around his eyes worked. They weren’t there to tally time. They were there to give his face the necessary room to transform, to blossom.

“You are famous in our family,” he said. For someone who leaned on the “famous” line like crutches at the time, it reached my blood much too quickly.

“Well,” I said, shifting. “That’s—”