I stayed on the porch after Mom went to bed, watched the sky above the canyon fade to black, the stars begin their shimmer. When I was pretty sure she was asleep, I got my computer, which I still plug into the phone modem here in the canyon. My brother, Andy, a former cop, is in state prison. He was convicted of falsifying evidence in a number of local cases down in Loveland, lying under oath. For a while, before he got caught, Andy was the big man on the force, the go-to, the crack investigator who always got the bad guy. Mom was so proud of him, her reputation elevated by his. Andy still denies the charges, claims innocence, but I'm pretty sure he did it. The danger of investing in reputation alone is that it's easy to put it above a sense of ethics. Andy wanted to be the best crime-stopper so badly that he started to invent criminals to stop, didn't see until it was too late the way that made him a criminal himself. I don't condone the choices he made, but I understand them.

Mom took Andy's side, the last person to recognize that he really had gone crooked, even as the evidence stacked up. Bobby Jackson wasn't cooking meth at the old sugar mill. Sally James did not embezzle any funds from the United Way. I try to give Mom credit for doing the right thing eventually, calling Andy out, but her sudden shift seemed cowardly to me, a move made solely to protect her own reputation from the downfall of his. The worst part of all of it is that Andy's wife, Leah, has to raise their little boy on her own now. She lets Mom and me take Tyler to McDonald's every so often, but she can't forgive us any more than she can forgive Andy. Mom gets indignant about that, but I don't blame Leah one bit.

I pay the fees required for me and Andy to send emails back and forth, or at least, for me to send him emails. I write about the doctor's visits and the prognosis, about Mom's dry cough and how much weight she's lost. He almost never responds. A few days ago, I wrote about myself, about the pregnancy, and when I pulled up the system, he'd gotten back to me.

Wish I could be a fly on the wall when you tell Mom.

I closed my laptop, buried my face in my hands. Andy never cared much about feelings. Not mine. Not anyone's. “This is tough love,” he'd say, his face heavy, emotionless. “You'll thank me someday,” but I don't. Life is hard enough without everyone you love trying to harden you further. When my baby is born, I'll be all marshmallow. Feather down. Fleece. I'll be the softest thing my baby touches, the softest thing that touches her.