Country music plays from the old jukebox to our left. A pool table takes up the majority of the narrow space, its green felt ripped and stained in places. Two scrawny men in flannel shirts face off, pool sticks gripped in their bony fingers as they pause their game to glance over.

A raspy cackle of laughter draws my attention to the single bar lined up to our right. A lady with peroxide-yellow hair grins at the greasy-looking man next to her. Their eyes are almost obscenely wide against their gaunt faces.

Reggie hardly bats an eye as he steps up to the bar. The bald, barrel-chested bartender tops off a mug with more foam than beer, before sliding it toward an older man with white, feathery hair huddled at the corner nearest to us. He appears to be sleeping, but then a wrinkled, arthritic hand reaches out for the mug.

“Reggie, my man, you’re lookin’ good in your old age,” the bartender greets, smiling a wide yellow, gapped grin beneath a scraggly beard that’s more gray than brown. “How’ve ya—”

“Where’s my nephew, Jim?”

The bartender’s face falters, his smile dimming. He spreads his hands along the bar. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Reg.”

“Where is he?”

“What happened that night was fucked up, and that little girl didn’t deserve what happened to her, but Shay is payin’ for his mistake,” Jim goes on, ignoring Reggie’s rapidly thinning patience. “Don’t you think it’s ‘bout time you stop punishing us all? I mean, Jesus H. Christ, Reg, he was your best friend. Your family. What happened to loyalty? Brotherhood? What happened to—”

“Yeah, and what about Waylon, or did you forget what my so-called best friend did to his son before getting in the car that night?”

Ivy tenses next to me and I dart my eyes between the two men, wondering what they’re talking about.

Jim glances down. “It was a mistake—”

Reggie laughs and there’s nothing humorous to it. “He nearly fucking killed him.”

Everything in me stills. What?

“Thinking he could possibly raise a kid after Gemma’s death was the mistake,” Reggie goes on, but it’s like I’m listening from down a long tunnel. “One I regret every fucking second of my life. Now. Where. Is. He?”

Jim points toward the other side of the bar. “He’s out back. Kid’s a mess...”

I’m already moving before he gets the sentence out.

Icy rain slaps me across the face when I shove the door open. I squint, whipping my head around—

There.

My vision narrows into a single point as my eyes land on the body slumped over against the stucco siding several feet away. As if he sat down, passed out, and teetered to the side, his arm is stretched out under his head, and his shirt’s ridden up, exposing his side and back.