No doubt, there is a glisten of mild panic in your eyes.

Are we really doing this? Are we really—here?

Like the meeting with your mother yesterday, this meeting with your brother has been arranged by Katie at the “new” house on Harrison Street where Lionel has been living following his release from prison. Elsewhere in the house your mother is lying down trying to nap and your cousin Trix is chatting on the phone with a friend.

About time you guys got together, Katie said brightly.

The casualness of you guys is encouraging to you. Maybe it has all been a misunderstanding on your part, the animosity of both your brothers? Maybe it had been mostly an accident, Lionel pushing you down the icy steps?

You wonder if Lionel even remembers it. That time of confusion and unease, dread. When the arrest of your brothers had seemed imminent and yet, the arrest of your brothers had not (yet) occurred.

You wonder if you are remembering the episode correctly: If the steps had been icy, possibly you’d just slipped?

Lionel is having difficulty smiling. Moving his mouth. An effort. Ice pick eyes. Creased forehead of a much older man. Finally he manages, his smile is a shriek of pain.

You think—He is trying to forgive. It is not easy for him.

You have been smiling, too. Smilesmile as waitresses learn to do while hoping to be tipped.

Awkwardly you speak together. Lionel is reticent, you will have to do most of the talking. Ask him questions that are easy to answer. No threat. No implied judgment. You have been told that Daddy helped get him a job at Neilson’s Lumberyard which is familiar to you from childhood, natural to ask him about that job, also if he has gotten together with friends from high school, though (it seems) that is not a great question since Lionel falls silent, grimacing. Of course, don’t ask him that! Your brother is an ex-convict. He has been shamed in the eyes of his old friends and of everyone who knew him.

Your voice sounds hoarse too, thin and insincere. You have not been able to decipher all of Lionel’s words but haven’t wanted to ask him to speak louder for perhaps he can’t.

Thinking if you’d glimpsed this man on the street it’s likely that you would not have recognized him.

Passing him, you would avoid making eye contact.

There is a plaintive look to Lionel’s face, an air of reproach, hurt. His skin has become coarse, putty-colored. He is heavyset and slow-moving where once he’d been lean and muscular, hyperactive and impatient. His eyebrows are thick and well defined. You can imagine that some women might find him attractive—except for the habit of derision into which his mouth naturally shifts.