PART 2 The party went completely silent. Twenty people stared at my brother. “We had a memorial,” the woman said. Her name was Lupe Medina. She’d lived across the street from my parents for thirty years. “At St. Timothy’s. You cried. You said he went peacefully in his sleep.”

“I cried for you every night, mija.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Tiffany dropped the margarita pitcher. It shattered on the pool deck.

The sirens were getting closer.

“He’s confused,” Ray said, backing toward the house. “This is what I’ve been dealing with. He makes things up.”

“Then explain the padlock,” I said. “Explain the dog bowl.”

Ray didn’t answer.

The ambulance arrived. Then two Mesa police cars.

The paramedics took Dad’s core temperature on the patio. 105.1.

“Ma’am,” the paramedic said to me, “if you’d found him an hour later, he wouldn’t have made it.”

While they loaded him, an officer asked Ray for his ID.

He didn’t have to search the house very long.

In the kitchen drawer, there was a death certificate. A fake one, printed off the internet, with Dad’s name on it. There was a sympathy card from the American Legion with a check inside. There were Dad’s VA pension statements, still arriving every month, deposited into an account in Ray’s name.