He had transferred funds and paid for repairs and sent expensive gifts, and he had gone months, sometimes, without sitting down to have a single real conversation with his parents, and he had told himself, the whole time, that this was care, that money was protection, that a well-funded parent was a safe one.

And a predator had been dismantling his mother and father’s dignity, room by room, right under the cover of that comfortable assumption, and Alvin had not seen it, because he had been paying instead of paying attention.

Six months later, spring came to Savannah.

Alvin walked up the front steps of his parents’ home, and the grand front doors stood wide open, letting the warm sweet Southern breeze flow through the hallway.

In the back garden, Carmen was laughing with Mrs.