“Your parents are going to take a vacation,” she told them. “I’ll stay here with you until they come back.”

Neither he nor his sister missed their parents. Their departure coincided with summer and the end of classes, and they had both had more than enough melodrama. Plus they were too young to ask questions: they didn’t even know that Older Brother wasn’t their father’s son; that their mother had secretly given birth to him while still almost a child herself, and for a long time had referred to her son as if he were also her brother. As if Older Brother were everybody’s brother. And they didn’t notice their father’s relief at being rid of that illegitimate son, that person who had gone on living at home well into adulthood, beyond what was reasonable, who looked old enough to be his wife’s husband and the father of their children, and was the consequence of pure evil.