All at once, the last four years came flooding back to me, cast in a different tone and hue. I saw my mother in her former life at Café Cabernet, leaning over a bar table to serve drinks to Mr. Haltom and a couple of business associates. I saw him come back alone, again and again. I saw her slide into the booth next to him when the floor was slow, heard him ask her about herself. I imagined her describing her lonely, introverted son and his troubles at his rough public school in East Nashville, musing about moving to the west side when she could save the money. I saw his eyes brighten, saw the wheels spinning in his head, heard him say, “I’ve got just the solution for your problem.” Then I pictured Mr. Haltom calling Arch into his study, sitting him down, confiding in him, man-to-man. “I’m going to need a favor from you,” he would’ve said.

I looked over at Arch.

“Is this why we’re friends?” I said. “Why I’m at Yeatman?”

“Uncle Jim has helped a lot of guys over the years,” Arch said.

“Was he poking their moms too?”

“Come on, Charlie.”

Would I have turned down everything I’d been given by the Creighs and the Haltoms if I’d known it was all because of my mother? Of course not. Still, it felt cheapened and tainted. For so long, I’d believed that Mr. Haltom had seen something in me—that Arch had too. What a fool I’d been.

“When I first met you, I was doing a favor for Uncle Jim,” he said. “But once I got to know you, you were my bud, for real. My brother. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. I didn’t really know how to bring it up. But here we are.”

Arch looked down at his father’s headstone.

“My father was weak,” he said. “Truth be told, he was a fucking joke. I can work for the rest of my life to live down his mistakes, and it won’t be enough. He had everything handed to him, and he couldn’t do shit with it. About the only thing he had going for him was Uncle Jim. And if he hadn’t died, he would have stayed a joke for life, and I’d be a joke too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re missing the point,” he said. “Uncle Jim is a self-made man. He’s a winner. You could do a hell of a lot worse for a stepdad.”