Malachi made me feel less marooned. He made me feel like there was someone out there I didn’t have to explain anything to. That’s why I bullied Harry the way I did, and got him to take my brother back to the monastery. There he’ll be cared for by the priests and the other penitents in their quiet, reflective world. I can’t think of a better place for him. Lulu and Dave would probably freak out if they knew, and insist that I take him to the police, and let them handle him.

Maybe one day I will, and maybe I won’t. He’s family, after all.

And whether Lulu meant to or not, she’s managed to teach me that there are times you should forgive family, even though you don’t want to, and even though you wouldn’t forgive anyone else on earth if they treated you that way. I felt a strange little ache when I thought about Lulu and her mother, and how they’d gone for fifteen years with a wall between them because of a misunderstanding. Sure, Grandma could have and likely should have handled things differently; she should have let Lulu and Michelle go and visit my mother. She should have told them what was really going on.

Then again, my mother could have told them too, and she didn’t. It was hard to sort out, though it might have been easier if I’d known either of them at all.

“It’s kind of your fault, you know,” I complained gently at my aunt, who was posing there on the duvet. She was so beautiful that it made my chest hurt; and I was so happy that she was alive, and she was well enough to be pretty while weak. I was delighted that she was healthy enough to milk the hospital visit for every ounce, and I was overjoyed to see Dave bouncing from room to room, playing nursemaid.

“What do you mean, my fault?”

“I mean, if you’d been willing to talk about my mother once in a while, I wouldn’t have wondered so hard that I went talking to other people.”

“But I didn’t know the answers to half of what you wanted.”

“That seems to be true,” I admitted, “but the answers wouldn’t have been half so important if you’d been . . .“I dropped it. There wasn’t a good way to finish the thought, so I didn’t. “All I want to say is, I wish you’d been more willing to talk about her. If I’d known something, I wouldn’t have been so desperate to know anything at all.”

“You never asked much.”

“Touché.”