Danny caught Joe as he leapt off the ground and hugged him, pressing his smooth cheek to Danny’s, his arms digging into his neck, and it surprised Danny that he often forgot how much his baby brother loved him.

Joe was eleven and small for his age, though Danny knew he made up for it by being one of the toughest little kids in a neighborhood of tough little kids. He hooked his legs around Danny’s hips, leaned back, and smiled. “Heard you stopped boxing.”

“That’s the rumor.”

Joe reached out and touched the collar of his uniform. “How come?”

“Thought I’d train you,” Danny said. “First trick is to teach you how to dance.”

“Nobody dances.”

“Sure they do. All the great boxers took dance lessons.”

He took a few steps down the sidewalk with his brother and then whirled, and Joe slapped his shoulders and said, “Stop, stop.”

Danny spun again. “Am I embarrassing you?”

“Stop.” He laughed and slapped his shoulders again.

“In front of all your friends?”

Joe grabbed his ears and tugged. “Cut it out.”

The kids in the street were looking at Danny as if they couldn’t decide whether they should be afraid, and Danny said, “Anyone else want in?”

He lifted Joe off his body, tickling him the whole way down to the pavement, and then Nora opened the door at the top of the stoop and he wanted to run.

“Joey,” she said, “your ma wants you in now. Says you need to clean up.”

“I’m clean.”

Nora arched an eyebrow. “I wasn’t asking, child.”

Joe gave a beleaguered good-bye wave to his friends and trudged up the steps. Nora mussed his hair as he passed and he slapped at her hands and kept going and Nora leaned into the jamb and considered Danny. She and Avery Wallace, an old colored man, were the Coughlins’ domestic help, though Nora’s actual position was a lot more nebulous than Avery’s. She’d come to them by accident or providence five years ago on Christmas Eve, a clacking, shivering gray-fleshed escapee from the northern coast of Ireland. What she’d been escaping from had been anyone’s guess, but ever since Danny’s father had carried her into the home wrapped in his greatcoat, frostbitten and covered in grime, she’d become part of the essential fabric of the Coughlin home. Not quite family, not ever quite that, at least not for Danny, but ingrained and ingratiated nonetheless.

“What brings you by?” she asked.

“The Old Men,” he said.

“A planning and a plotting, are they, Aiden? And, sure, where do you fit in the plan?”

He leaned in a bit. “Only my mother calls me ‘Aiden’ anymore.”

She leaned back. “You’re calling me your mother now, are you?”

“Not at all, though you would make a fine one.”

“Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.”

“You would.”

Her eyes pulsed at that, just for a moment. Pale eyes the color of basil. “You’ll need to go to confession for that one, sure.”