Did you know, they can do that? It’s what parole is—parole for “good behavior.”

Trying to convince myself that my brother, having served time for manslaughter, had an investment in good behavior.

It was not often that Katie called me. Helplessly I’d listened to her voice. At such times my loneliness was greatest for when we hung up the silence would be overwhelming.

Whatever I wished my sister to say to me, it was not said.

And Miriam whom I adored, Miriam who’d once been so loving to me—she rarely had time to call. Married now, with a young child, living in Albany, New York, where her husband worked as a chemical engineer.

Miriam was ashamed of the Kerrigans, it was said. She’d urged her husband to get a job in a city far enough away from South Niagara that no one would associate her with the Kerrigan brothers who’d beaten a black boy to death with a baseball bat or the “controversial” politician Tom Kerrigan who stirred racial anxieties and animosities in his (successful) campaign for a state assembly seat.

Miriam felt sorry for me, I’d been told. Maybe a little guilty. Intended to invite me to spend time with her in her new life in Albany, soon.

Neither Katie nor Miriam had said anything to me about Arnold Sandman. No communication except the get well cards.

Anything to do with sex, we were shy to speak of. Sometimes when there are no words, that is best.

I wondered what the relatives thought of me now. That girl, Violet! Who’d ratted on her own brothers, got them sent to prison. Sent away by her parents to live with relatives in Port Oriskany where she was abused by a teacher in some unspeakable way.

For shame! Lucky the pervert didn’t kill her.

“Violet? Come here”—at last, there came Aunt Irma’s wavering voice from the foot of the stairs.

By this time I was badly trembling. I had tried not to listen to the one-sided conversation below. Whoever had called Irma had done most of the talking; Irma had murmured in agreement, little exclamations of surprise, sympathy. As I descended the stairs slowly I saw that my aunt was looking grave and I dared to think that the news could not be good—that is, Lionel could not have been paroled. “Such sad news, Violet. Your grandfather Kerrigan has died.”

My grandfather! For a moment my mind was blank.

“. . . would have been eighty-eight years old in just a week. Of course, he’d been ill for a long time, poor man . . .”