Still, Katie was silent. I could envision my sister biting her lower lip, staring into a corner of the room.

“Katie? Are you there? Is something wrong?”—my voice cracked with anxiety.

“I—I’m here, Violet. I am—here.” There was a blankness in my sister’s speech like the blankness in Aunt Irma’s face when I’d asked her a question she had not seemed to hear.

“It’s all right if I come, Katie? Isn’t it? I mean—Grandpa is my grandfather, people would wonder if I didn’t come to his funeral . . . Wouldn’t they?”

“Oh, Violet. I—don’t know. It’s kind of a stressful time for us. Maybe not good to try to ‘visit’ right now—you know how Daddy feels about you.”

“But Daddy would see that I cared. About Grandpa.”

Katie seemed to be contemplating this. To me, it seemed so plausible that a death in the family would draw us together.

“. . . thing is, Violet, it’s not a great time for any more surprises. Grandpa had not wanted to be moved to the nursing home. He went kind of crazy, so angry. Breaking things. Shouting. Threatening he’d set the house on fire. We were all afraid of him especially Mom who was stuck in the house with him so much. Daddy was hoping they could make it up before he died, but that didn’t happen. Grandpa wouldn’t even see Daddy at the end, or anyone. In the nursing home they had to restrain him even after he’d had strokes and didn’t weigh more than one hundred pounds. So Daddy is feeling terrible, how things turned out. And he might have to sell the house, to pay lawyers. That makes him really depressed, him and Mom both. You know how Daddy loves this house.”

Terrible news! The house I’d been forbidden to enter, of which I dreamt every night . . . If my father sold it, there would be no home for me to return to, ever.

“. . . and Lionel was up for his first parole hearing this week—I told you. But it was postponed until next month, we don’t know why.”

Postponed to next month. That was why Aunt Irma hadn’t mentioned it, there was no news only a deferment.

A reprieve, it was. I would not have to think about my vengeful brother released to punish me for another four weeks at least.

“Violet? You know how Daddy is . . . How he’s been . . . I don’t think he would be much different now, if you showed up at the funeral. I mean—he hasn’t changed his way of thinking about you. Mom maybe, a little—Mom does say she misses you. But . . .”

Misses me. But won’t do anything about it, will she.

Hearing this I thought—I hate her more than I hate him.