“I have something for you,” he said, as I sat on his couch moments after canceling the viewing on his insistence. He presented me with two closed fists from which to choose a fate.

An old memory flashed into my mind before I could push it away like I made sure to do whenever I was with Graham, whenever I was living this life I’d made for myself now. My brother Will and me, sitting on the ground in the backyard, dirty and in need of a deep scrub. His fists were held out, white-knuckling whatever was inside. I tapped the right. When he opened it, it was empty. Then he opened the left. Before I could scream at what I saw, he was throwing it at me. A baby mouse, stiff, pale pink, and dead, landed in my lap as delicately as a dollop of cream in my father’s coffee. As Will walked away, laughing so hard he had to bend over every few steps to catch his breath, I dug a meager hole in the dirt with my fingers. It was easy to bury something that small.

I looked up at Graham, his smile slightly fading with each second I wasn’t responding. I took a deep breath and told myself to play along. I had to play along.

“If I choose the wrong one, do I not get the surprise?”

“With proper negotiation you can have whatever you want.”

I looked at his fists, hairless and smooth from the moisturizer he applies ritualistically. Every night over the sink like Lady Macbeth except instead of blood it’s La Mer. For something that appeared so innocent, they were capable of such harm if they wanted to be. In one swift move, he could reach for me, twist his fingers around my neck, and squeeze until he’d emptied me of my last inch of life. Like a pale pink baby mouse. Their money could bury me as easily as I had buried it.

Graham had gotten into fights before—most notably the one in college that left his right nostril a little smaller than his left. For a man who prides himself on self-control—whose respect for me increases threefold every time I turn down a third glass of wine or a piece of predinner bread—I’d been shocked to learn he’d ever put himself in a position to lose his balance so much, to drink so much that he would punch and get punched back. That felt more like a move his brother would make than him.