“Is there any salad left over?” I asked.

“Brent finished off the bowl around four,” she said.

She lifted the plate with the steak and headed for the living room doorway without once meeting my eyes.

The living room carpet was buried in crushed white foam packing peanuts and torn cardboard flaps.

Brent was sitting on the edge of the sofa holding a pair of heavy kitchen scissors.

He was twenty-nine, dressed in an oversized gray hoodie with the cuffs shoved up past his elbows.