By ten in the morning, the air over Larkspur, East Texas, had already turned thick and wet, the kind of heat that made shirts stick to skin and old houses smell like dust, cedar, and secrets. Gabe Walker stood in the doorway of his dead grandfather’s bedroom with a trash bag in one hand and a knot in his stomach that had been there since the funeral.
Three weeks earli
He had loved his mother all his life, but love and understanding were not the same thing. Diane Walker had a soft voice, kind hands, and a permanent wariness around loud men. She had a way of apologizing before anyone blamed her. As a boy, Gabe thought that was simply her nature. As he got older, he began to suspect nature had little to do with it.
When his father finally went out to the porch with another beer and the TV muttering baseball highlights behind him, Gabe found Diane standing at the sink staring out the dark window.
