“I remember one time,” Dervish continues, “not long after Cal married your mum. We had a huge fight. He wanted me to quit being a Disciple, marry and have kids, lead a normal life. He thought I was crazy to do what I did.”

“He wasn’t wrong,” I snort.

“You love it really,” Dervish grins. Blood trickles down his chin.

“Save your breath,” I tell him, trying not to shudder.

“What for? I won’t need it where I’m going.” He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t think I can survive, do you?”

“Of course not. I’m just sick of listening to you whine.”

Dervish laughs softly. The laugh turns into a blood-drenched cough. I hold him as he shakes and moans, spewing up blood and phlegm. When the fit passes, he asks me to move him out of the cave. “I don’t think I need worry about sunburn,” he murmurs.

I pick up my dying uncle and carry him outside. He doesn’t weigh much. Thin and drawn, overstretched by the world. He rests his head on my chest, like a baby cuddling up to its mother. I prop him against a large rock, then settle beside him. His eyes stay closed. He’s dozed off. I study him sadly, memorizing every line of his creased face, brushing the wilting spikes of hair back from his forehead, remembering all the nights he comforted me when I’d had a nightmare.

With a jolt he wakes and looks around, alarmed. When he sees me, and the hole in his chest, he relaxes. “Oh, it was only a dream. I thought we were in trouble.”

“Nothing can trouble us here.”

Dervish smiles at me lopsidedly. “I loved having you live with me. You were like my son. Billy was too, but I never got to spend the sort of time with him that I did with you.”

“If you were my real dad, I’d have asked to be put into foster care.”

Dervish’s smile widens. “That’s what I like to hear. You’re a true Grady. We don’t do sympathetic.”