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weeks.”
    “I went once when I first moved back from Phoenix. That’s all I could bear. You think I’d be used to seeing him like that by now.”
    “I was just there this afternoon. They had Christmas ornaments up. Slit your wrists depressing.”
    He flinched inside. Shouldn’t have put it that way.
    Grant could feel the scotch already beginning to soften his knees. He moved toward the couch. A mattress and blanket had been shoved underneath it. Did she fuck her clients down here by the fireside? Right on this floor where he was standing? He pushed the thought away.
    “I want you to know that I thought about contacting you,” Paige said as he lowered himself onto the cushion.
    “Wish you had.”
    Grant sipped his drink and watched the fire.
    Through the window at his back, he could hear the rain falling on the hedges.
    “I do have one favor to ask,” Grant said.
    She grimaced.
    “Relax, it’s not a big deal. I just haven’t eaten since lunch and this whiskey is going to my head in a hurry.”
    “You want me to make you something?”
    “How about I make us something. Are you hungry?”
    She smiled, and for a split second, it was like a window into the Paige of old. A break in the armor. “You mean like your world famous grilled cheese?”
    “I have a confession to make. It’s not actually world famous.”

Chapter 7
    The square of butter sizzled as Grant guided it around the pan with a wooden spatula. Paige sat on a barstool at the kitchen island, skillets and copper sauce pans of every size dangling above her head from a hanging pot rack.
    “Mild cheddar or Jack?” Grant asked.
    “You don’t remember?”
    “American cheese it is.”
    Grant opened the door to the fridge. Not exactly a wellspring of food—just a half-empty jug of skim milk two weeks past expiration, the usual condiments, three cardboard pizza boxes, a colony of leftover Chinese cartons, and yes, a stack of plastic-wrapped slices.
    He returned to the stove with the mayo and Kraft Singles, trying but failing to remember the last time he’d made a grilled cheese sandwich, even for himself. Wondered if that had been a subconscious thing. This had once been their meal of choice, if not necessity. Just the smell of browning butter conjured up that year they’d fled foster care and lived on their own in a drafty single-wide on the outskirts of Tacoma. Grant fifteen, Paige thirteen. They’d lasted nine months before Social Services caught up with them.
    Cold, broke, always hungry, yet it surpassed, in every way, living with strangers.
    Grant eased the sandwiches onto the skillet and left them to sizzle.
    Sat across from Paige at the island.
    Under the brighter recessed lighting in the kitchen, she looked even worse. What he’d mistaken for her good complexion was foundation. Her skin was sallow, eyes bloodshot and underscored with black bags that the concealer couldn’t quite conceal. The way she sat on her hands made him wonder if it was to hide their trembling.
    “I’m sorry I just showed up,” Grant said.
    “You mean that?”
    “Yeah.”
    She reached across the table and touched his hand.
    “I just didn’t know if you’d see me again,” Grant said. “Considering how we left it last time.”
    He pulled away and slid off the stool, headed back to the stove.
    “I could never make them taste the way yours did,” Paige said as he moved the sandwiches onto plates.
    “You probably missed the most important step.”
    “Which one’s that?”
    “You have to add a new pat of butter to the skillet when you’re halfway done. So each side gets the love.”
    “Equal opportunity buttering—I like it.”
    Grant watched the new square melt. He lifted the skillet, let the butter skate across the surface for a few seconds before flipping the cold sides of the sandwiches onto the heat.
    “So what do you think, big bro? Your sister, the whore. That’s a new one, right?”
    Grant stared down into the skillet.
    She’d always liked to fuck