Lionel peers at Brindle in miniature. What kind of dog is that? Some kind of rat terrier?

Rat terrier. This is accidental, you think. This is not meant to mock or wound.

You tell Lionel that Brindle is a miniature bulldog. A very sweet dog.

Why didn’t you bring Brindle with you to South Niagara?—Lionel doesn’t ask.

Reason is: if something happens to you here. If (as you’d thought, back in Mohawk) there was actual danger here, from Lionel. Better to leave Brindle with Tyrell, the two get along well with each other.

Now, the reason seems silly. The morose man in front of you, your brother Lionel, slack-bodied, prematurely middle-aged, is nothing like the angry vindictive young man you’d been imagining for years. Preposterous to think that he’d ever wanted to kill you . . .

You hear yourself tell Lionel that you are completing a degree in the School of Social Work at the State University at Mohawk. Your plan is to go to graduate school and get a master’s degree. You don’t tell him All I have lived through, in exile—I want it to have been for a purpose.

Hoping that it doesn’t sound boastful, that you have been working as a (minimally) paid intern with Mohawk County Family Services. In this underpaid/understaffed office you have been entrusted with responsibility, perhaps you appear to be a trustworthy person. You keep late hours in the office, available if you are needed. You are the one who holds the frightened child’s hand, the one to whom the battered wife, daughter might speak in lowered voices. In your backpack are the better eyelid-wipes, not the cheaper eyelid-wipes available in most drugstores. In your backpack is a store of over-the-counter painkillers which you will provide as needed, sparingly. Because you look younger than your age and might (almost) be one of them, teenaged girls feel comfortable with you for you are not likely to judge them. Unlike your superiors you are not very verbal. You are likely to be quiet. As the battered are quiet. The intimacy of silence is natural to you. You know how harsh and abrasive speech can be, to the wounded. Better silence until the right words come.

Guardedly Lionel is listening to you, or gives that impression. He has not exactly looked at you yet but rather has cast sidelong glances at you that seem wistful, yearning. You have been anxiously waiting for the fury to erupt but there seems to be none.

He is tired. Beaten down. Is it all over?