Mikey and Byron had never played Monopoly. They were young. Though even if it all came down to just age, Roy had to admit that it was hard to imagine Mikey or Byron growing up in a household where there’d ever been family game night. Feral, that’s what they were. Cats with no collars.

They’d laughed when he’d brought it in. The wear and repair on the box had left the bottom more duct tape than cardboard, the white-and-red top frayed to fuzz along the edges. The play money had been so thoroughly thumbed that it was all more or less the same dingy color. But even after almost three decades, every bit of it was still there—every playing piece, every property marker, all the Community Chest and Chance cards. Even the original dice.

And in the random chemistry of some nights, it was great. There was beer enough on hand and the laughter was contagious, and by the time everyone was bleary-eyed and completely, if temporarily, over the busted TV, Mikey disappeared down the hall and came back with a tattered lace-trimmed pillow and pointed vaguely past the kitchen and reminded Roy that the bathroom was back that way, if he needed it.

So here the next morning, with the sun blazing through the bent blinds, was the smell of bacon, and after some clomping and door slamming, a good bit of noisy chatter coming from the kitchen.

Roy walked in on the end of an argument. A young woman with yesterday’s mascara smudged down to her cheekbones had her glittering club shoes swinging by their straps in the fist she was jabbing over the table at Mikey.

She cut her eyes at Roy as he crossed the kitchen’s threshold, but homed back in on their host, who went rigid under her wrath.

“And you can ask your asshole brother. I haven’t been here for almost a week. I don’t know what happened to your stupid TV, and there’s no way I’m on the hook for it. I just came to get some of my shit.” She shook the drawstring bag that was scrunched in her nonshoe fist. “And to get my pillow, except that you let some random hobo sleep on it with his greasy-ass head.” Her shoe-clutching hand flung out toward Roy. The heel swung wide and nearly took the nose off of Byron, who was sitting quiet and goggle-eyed next to Mikey at the table.

Byron sputtered out a laugh at Roy’s expense.

“And I don’t know who you are,” the girl said to Byron, drilling him through with a bloodshot glare. “But you can fuck right off, too.”