Lionel is thirty-one years old but could be a decade older. He has never lived alone. He has lived only in your parents’ house and in the maximum security prison facility at Marcy. Until recently he has never had to take care of himself as adults do: shopping for clothes and food, preparing food for themselves, driving a car. Katie has told me how when Lionel had first returned to South Niagara he’d seemed terrified of leaving the house. She’d volunteered to drive him to the mall to shop for clothes and other items and he’d virtually panicked, paralyzed at the sight of so many people of whom (he was sure) many were aware of his identity. He’d frozen on an escalator. He’d ducked into a men’s lavatory to avoid someone he thought he knew from his high school class. He’d sweated in a state of terror as Katie drove, flinching at intersections.

Tragic, how Daddy died, so soon after Lionel returned home to live.

He’d been stunned by the death, hid away in his room and refused to attend the funeral mass or visit the cemetery.

Since then Lionel has grown more adjusted to the outside world. He has said he likes working at the lumberyard where he has no need to interact with customers, simply follows orders as he’d done in prison. He intends to acquire a driver’s license, soon.

Defiantly Katie says, as if this is an argument she has been making, to her husband perhaps: we have to help Lionel. He’s my brother. Whatever happened is behind us now. He’s served his time.

Served his time. There is comfort in such familiar words.

This is true, you are thinking. You will help Lionel, if you can.

Wildly the thought comes to you—Move back to South Niagara. Live with Mom and Lionel. Get a job here . . .

You recall how as a boy Lionel admired and emulated his older brother Jerome Jr. but he’d also been intimidated by him, harassed and bullied. Without Jerr goading him Lionel would never have committed any crime still less such a terrible crime.

As Lionel speaks haltingly in his hoarse cracked voice you are thinking these things. Wishing that you dared speak to Lionel openly. But there is this shyness between you, each uncertain what the other exactly remembers, and what emotions the other still harbors.

Groping, blundering at a reconciliation. If that is what this is.

At last Lionel asks you about your life. It is an effort for him, you can see—he dreads to hear that you are doing well, and that you are happy; even as he seems to want to hear that you are doing well, and you are happy. You hesitate to tell him about Tyrell Jones but you are able to show him several snapshots of Brindle.