“I just want to talk to you, son.” Matthew glanced at me, tried to look apologetic. “Alone? This is family stuff, Harper.”

He wanted me to leave my own motel room.

“Not possible,” Tolliver said. He put his arm around me. “This is my family.”

Matthew’s eyes flicked from Tolliver to me, then back again. “I understand,” he said. “Listen, I got to apologize to you. I was a terrible father. I let you down, and I let down Laurel’s kids, too. And worst of all, I let down our children that we had together.”

Tolliver and I stood together silently, our sides touching. I didn’t even need to look up at my brother, because I knew how he felt. Matthew didn’t need to tell us who he’d let down. We knew all about it.

And yet, he was obviously waiting for our reaction.

“None of this is news to us,” Tolliver said.

“Laurel and I were addicted,” Matthew said. “That’s not an excuse for our negligence, but a . . . confession, I guess. We did bad things. I’m asking for your forgiveness.”

I wondered if this was something Matthew was obliged to do as a step in some rehabilitation program. If so, he’d gone about it the wrong way entirely. Stalking his children, following me to get to Tolliver, this was not the way to express contrition.

After another moment of silence, I said, “Do you remember the night Mariella got so sick, and we tried to sneak out of the trailer to take her to the doctor, and you blocked the door and wouldn’t let us leave because you didn’t want the hospital to call social services? We were willing that night to be separated, if we could just get help for her.”

“She got better!”

“Because we stayed up all night putting her in a cool bath and giving her baby Tylenol!”

Matthew looked blank.

“You don’t remember anything about it,” Tolliver said. “You don’t remember the night we had to sleep under the trailer because it was full of your friends. You don’t remember when Harper got hit by lightning and you wouldn’t call an ambulance.”

“I do remember that.” Matthew looked straight at Tolliver. “You saved her life that day. You did CPR.”

“And you did nothing,” I said.

“I loved your mother,” he said to me.

“Yeah, I’m really glad you were there for her at the end,” I said. “When she died alone, and you were in another jail.”

“Were you there?” he said, swift as a striking snake.

“I didn’t claim to love her.”

“Did you go to the funeral?”

If he thought he was heaping coals on my head, he could think again. “No. I don’t go to funerals. For obvious reasons.”