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Patrick closed the door behind him, took the key from his pocket, and locked it.

Sam had already sprung to his feet, and he caught the key when Patrick threw it to him.

Patrick needed badly to find a drink.

“Don’t let anyone pass you by, Sam,” he said in a far-off voice.

“Yessir.”

“Good man.”

The piano music and raised voices crept up the stairwell, muffling the sounds of a rhythmic moaning on the third floor, a drunken argument on the second. Patrick paused on the last step, pinching the bridge of his noise, forcing his racing mind to shut up.

Then he cursed lowly, pulled his collar higher and pushed the door open.

The volume swallowed him. Clarence was belting the piano keys to the poor accompaniment of “Ol’ Digger Come,” sung by a small crowd with closed eyes, arms banded about one another’s shoulders.

The pastor sat in the corner, puce-faced as he arm wrestled a boy half his age.

Beneath a framed portrait of Patrick’s grandmother, two women pressed into the wall, mouths and hands and hips joined.

A drum beat incessantly behind Patrick’s right eye.

“Pat!” trilled Marie-Laure. She wore a blouse pulled low over her breasts with the first button undone.

“Join us!” Her teeth were wine-tinged. It made her look cannibalistic.

The man whose lap she sat upon had turned at the sound of Patrick’s name and grinned drunkenly in his direction.

“Brother!” Donny shouted, almost dislodging Marie-Laure.

“You’re back already? Weren’t so hard to get her here then, eh? ”

Patrick’s little brother felt around the stained table for his drink, almost knocking over several others in the process.

“Lord, kill me,” Patrick groaned, then took the glass of whiskey before Donny could reach it, swallowing the remnants. For a brief moment, he shut his eyes in pleasure, then turned to Marie-Laure. “Excuse us, darlin’.”

She pouted and demurred but stood all the same. She made sure to touch a discreet finger to Patrick’s belt as she passed. An invitation.

When she had melted into the crowd, Patrick grabbed Donny’s coat from the floor and threw it to him. “Get up,” he said. “We’ve got business.”

Donny groaned, then slumped onto the tabletop. “Please, Patty. Not tonight.”

“Get up,” Patrick told him once more, and started for the exit.

Patrick made it three paces before he was stopped. This time, a different woman blocked his way. She wore an apron and carried several empty pints, a furious expression souring her fair looks.

She glared up at Patrick with eyes he’d inherited, though hers were harder, more cutting. Deep lines sprouted from their corners.

“Ma,” Patrick greeted her, resisting the urge to scrub a hand over his face. Let this fuckin’ night end .

Tess Colson had a stare that could gouge out a man’s insides. If someone cut Patrick and his brothers open, they’d find empty husks.

“Where’ve you come from?” she asked shrewdly. Her voice reminded him of cracked leather, the heavy Northern accent born from her marrow.

“Runnin’ errands,” Patrick answered, smiling in a way he hoped was genial. “I’ll say goodnight, then—”

“Who was that wringin’ wet girl you brought back with you?” She eyed the door to the stairwell. “Never seen her before.”

“Just a guest,” he said bluntly. “Sam’s lookin’ in on her.”

Her jaw ticked. “Another?” She was not fooled by the evasion. “You plannin’ to fill up the entire buildin’ with Artisans, Patrick?”

“If I see fit.” He suppressed harsher words. “Tell the cook to send up somethin’ for her, would you?”

Tess Colson shook her head in resigned reproach. “Who is she?”

Patrick didn’t answer the question. He often found he didn’t need to where his mother was concerned. Tess Colson had the ability to weigh her sons’ breaths and read the morphing valleys of their expressions.

“Her?” she blustered, shaking her head in exasperation. “It’s her , ain’t it?”

Her. It meant many things at once. “It is.”

She nodded. It was not a gesture of support. “My, my,” she said. “You’ve gone and fucked it all up now, son. Haven’t you? You’re gonna bring the whole world down upon us.”

Patrick stared at a spot above her head and tempered himself. “She’s on our side now,” he said firmly.

“Is she?”

“She will be.”

Tess closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Patrick felt her exhaustion, her worry—a mother’s worry. “Be careful, son,” she said. “Please, for all our sakes. Promise me.”

Before he could nod, a hand took Patrick’s shoulder from behind. He did not bother looking back to see who it was, but Tess Colson did.

Her expression turned disapproving. She looked expectantly back at Patrick. “What’s this? You ain’t takin’ your brother nowhere in his state.”

Donny chose that moment to lean his chin on Patrick’s shoulder. “What state?” he drawled.

“He’s drunk,” Tess said. Donny was now pursing his lips around an invisible cigarette and attempting to light it. “Get him upstairs. Now.”

“We’ve got a small matter of business first,” Patrick said. “Won’t take long.”

Tess sighed, eyeing her sons as though God had given her a small reservoir of strength and they’d stolen it all at birth. “I don’t want to hear nothin’ about it in the mornin’,” she said. “You hear me?”

“Night, Ma,” Patrick said, stepping around her. He left her seething in place and pushed the door open. Isaiah lumbered over from his spot by the fireplace and followed them out.

Once over the threshold, Patrick didn’t keep moving right away. Instead, he lifted his face to the night sky, sucked breath into his lungs. God help me , he thought.

Donny had followed close, his hand still pressed to Patrick’s shoulder, releasing it once they’d cleared the stoop.

“I was about to take that girl to bed, Patty. This’d better be important,” he said, eyes staring somewhere beyond.

They never stilled. His pupils were the same hue as Patrick’s own, but they twitched minutely, even under the weight of whiskey.

“Which girl?” Patrick scoffed. “The whore?” Isaiah nosed his hand, eager to get moving.

“She weren’t a whore,” Donny staggered, overbalancing. “Said she were a traveler girl from Dorser.”

“Well,” Patrick exhaled, beginning down the street. He tugged on Donny’s sleeve until he fell into pace. “Unless I’m mistaken, I seem to remember Marie-Laure growing up in her daddy’s scrapyard on Rutting Way.”

Donny gasped. “Fuck me. Was that Marie-Laure ?”

“It were,” Patrick said. “You need to stop drinkin’ like that, Donny.”

He sniffed. “Couldn’t see straight before I started drinkin’. Ain’t gettin’ any blinder, am I?”

Patrick supposed he was right. Donny had never seen well as a kid, and it had only worsened with the years, his sight fading until there was nothing at all. Blind before he could find the first hair on his chin.

Patrick sighed. “Blindness ain’t ever hindered you so much before.”

“Come to think of it, her tits did feel familiar,” Donny muttered. “Hey, wait a minute. Where’s me wallet?”

“Long gone, I’ll bet.”

Donny dropped his hand to Patrick’s coat sleeve, gripping the fabric behind his elbow between two fingers. “Women,” he bleated. “Takin’ your money whether you bed ’em or not. A boyfriend would at least spend the night with me.”

Patrick lit a cigarette and put it in his brother’s hand, then lit another for himself. “Marie gets more done in a day than you do in a week, little brother,” he said. “Cost me a lot fuckin’ less, too, mind you.”

“I earn my keep,” Donny protested. “I’m out here with you now, ain’t I? You plannin’ on tellin’ me where the fuck we’re goin’?”

Patrick’s jaw flexed, the irritation he’d stemmed earlier returning. “We’re off to old Bernie’s place,” he said. “I need a quick word.”

Donny slowed a moment, then hurried to catch up. “Bernie? What’d he do?”

Patrick tried to frame the words carefully, though they fell flat no matter their shape. “He insulted a friend.”

“A friend?” Donny scoffed. “Who? Otto? Probably deserved it.”

“Not Otto.”

“Then who? Bernie is a dolt, but he’s no threat, Patty. We ought to leave him be. People will think—”

“I need a word with the man,” Patrick placated. “That’s all.”

He could feel Donny frowning behind him. “No cuttin’?”

“No,” he said. “No cuttin’.” Though the idea had merit.

“This friend ,” Donny continued. “Who is he then?”

Patrick didn’t answer, and Donny only sighed. The youngest Colson brother pulled a pistol from the inside of his coat as they walked, feeling for the bullets within the barrel. He blew smoke over his shoulder and did not ask further questions. He rarely did.

The Colson boys did what was asked of them. Just as they had for their father.

“Just give the man a scare, Donny,” Patrick told him. “And we’ll be on our way.”