It was hot.

That kind of Texas heat that stuck to the back of your neck like spit and fried the air into a greasy shimmer. Flies buzzed lazy loops by the window. The fan wheezed like it was dying slow. You sat on the ripped-up couch with your feet kicked up and a newspaper so old the ink came off on your fingers, half-reading, half-dozing. The house smelled like meat and motor oil and something sweet left out too long.

It was bliss.

Till the front door slammed open hard enough to rattle the nails in the walls.

Drayton barreled in red-faced, sweat-slick, pushing a rusted wheelchair with a scorched, twitchy mess of a man slumped in it. Grandpa. Skin flaking like pie crust. What little hair he had stuck up like wilted straw.

Drayton’s voice cracked through the air like a shotgun.

“WHICH ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS LEFT GRANDPA OUT IN THE DAMN SUN?!”

Drayton kicked the door shut with a heel, muttering curses about “dry-aged people jerky” and “damn brain-dead inbreds” as he wheeled Grandpa in, parking him crooked by the couch. The old man let out a long, sticky groan, like a door hinge in pain.