“I don’t know yet.”

“The timing seems awful coincidental. I don’t remember much about your mother-in-law. She the type to try to make you look bad?”

Renee Rango is the last person I want to think about right now, because all I want to do is run her over with Commodore’s Escalade for creating this shit storm.

“You could say that she and I never really bonded.” It’s the politest understatement I can make.

“Single mom with an only child?”

I nod.

“She probably wouldn’t have liked anyone he picked.”

I laugh. “Ricky was her little prince. He could do no wrong. But none of that matters now. I need to talk to her because she has a hell of a lot to answer for.”

“You think you could trust her word? Don’t know that I would.”

He has a good point, and it reminds me of what Commodore said about trust. Namely, that I do it too easily.

Magnus keeps talking. “If I were that asshole Riscoff, I’d make her pony up evidence before I’d give her the time of day.”

I don’t want to wait for Renee to dig up evidence. I just want it all to go away.

“I can’t help but wonder if she’s doing this for more than just the money.”

“What do you mean?” Magnus asks.

“Maybe she’d back off if I slipped out of town and disappeared.”

He leans back and crosses his legs at the ankles. “You gonna keep letting other people decide how your life goes? Or are you going to figure out what it is that you want?”

Again, the old man’s question reminds me eerily of the man he claims to hate. Maybe they’re both right. Maybe I’ve been letting people push me around for so long that I don’t know how to stop.

Magnus apparently thinks I’m taking too long to answer his question. “It sounds to me like all you want to do is keep running from your problems and hoping they won’t follow you. Let me be the bearer of bad news, kid—that ain’t gonna work.”

“Bringing my problems back to Gable didn’t exactly work either,” I reply in an attempt to defend myself.

“Your problems started in Gable. It’s the running that didn’t work. You ever think about staying in one place and facing them, and see how that goes down?”

I clasp the mug in my hands and bring it closer to my body, trying to absorb some of the heat. “Won’t staying just make it worse? The press won’t leave.”

He shrugs. “You won’t know until you try. It seems like you’ve made the same mistake a few times. Why not make a different one and see how it feels?” Magnus leans forward, resting his elbow on the counter. “When you get to be my age, you realize life is a whole lot of bullshit peppered with a few important things. But until you’re my age, you’re gonna mistake a whole lot of that bullshit for the important things. You need to figure out what you want out of this life, kid. Find the people you want to share it with and hold them close. That’s one of the few things that actually matters.”