“His name is Brando,” he says in a quiet voice that wheedles through the din. “I don’t know his last name. We first met online, eleven years ago, while he worked for BEEP. He was a scary genius. He offered me a drug trial because he knew how fucking unbearably anxious I was all the time. And it worked, at first. I felt … a lightness? A positivity. A mania, I guess. It was the drug that caused my heart attack, okay? But it wasn’t his fault. I shouldn’t have hoped for a magic cure. But he felt so guilty. He dug around and found cases even worse than mine—at least that’s what he said. He started to spiral about how unsafe these drugs were, and how your dad only chose to start a business on this island because the government was so lax about drug testing. The last time I saw him, he’d gone Full Metal Jacket. Cut his hair and grown out his beard. He even got three scars tattooed on his face to match mine. When I told him I didn’t give a shit, that I forgave him and them and just wanted to live my life with the settlement, he freaked out and told me I was missing the point. That this was bigger than me. Fucker is too smart and moral for his own good.”

I stand there, stock-still, unable to utter a single word for several seconds of eardrum-blasting metal. “I don’t think I knew anyone like that back then,” I shout at him.

He narrows his eyes. “Are you sure? Your mom did. They were close.”

The blood surges to my throat, acid-bright, and I lean in close enough to see the yellow speckling the whites of his eyes. “What?”

“Someone came here, once, to leave a note for him. At first I thought it was your mom, because she dressed up like her and pretended to be her to get past my mother, who was scared stiff over the NDA. But she was tall and weird. All she said to me was, Tell Brando that Lady loves him, and she’s sorry. She’ll wait for him every night in the cabin until he meets her.” He runs a hand over his face, and the skin shifts like a mask—baby satin when mashed in one direction, gravel in the other. “I thought it was a joke at first, honestly. But it was pointless anyway. I never saw him again.”

Stumbling from the house, I rack my mind for the man I missed, but my memory rushes to blacken out anything I inspect for too long. My brain feels like a ripped sieve.

So I focus on the messenger. Who would dress up like Mama and pretend to be her? Dozens of people. Hundreds. But who would bring that message from this Brando, with the word Lady?