“Give us a chance to talk with him first. Okay? After prison. After all this time. Give us a chance to feel him out. We don’t know his plans or why he’s back.”

“And when you know those things?”

“Then we’ll see where we are.”

I looked from one to the other. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever would. “May I be excused?”

My mother lifted her glass. “Do you have plans to see him again?”

“No,” I lied.

“Talk to him by phone?”

“If he has a number, I don’t know it.”

She studied me with eyes that were as cool and bright as my brother’s. “Are you still my good boy?”

“I try to be.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“Are you angry?”

“Not anymore.”

Another sip. The same eyes. “Clear your dishes.”

I carried dishes to the kitchen, and took the back stairs to my room. Inside, I closed the door and tried to see the space as if it were not my own: the posters and old toys and plastic trophies. When my father knocked on the door, it was after nine.

“Come in.”

He opened the door, surprised by the state of my room. The posters were down. Half the stuff I owned was boxed. “What’s all this?”

I shrugged, and kept packing. “Just wanted a change.”

He looked in one box and then another. “You giving this stuff away?”

“I guess.”

“Your comic books?” He lifted a stack from a half-full box. “You’ve collected these since you were eight.” I didn’t respond. He put the comic books down and sat on the edge of the bed. “About your mother…”

“You don’t need to explain.”

“I’m happy to talk about it.”

“She’s afraid Jason will ruin my life. This is hardly news.”

“It won’t be forever, son.”

“It’s been years, Dad. Five years that she won’t let me play sports or date girls. I can’t go camping or hunting. She barely lets me leave the house.”

“She let you have a car.”

“Because I paid for it myself.”

“She still allowed it.”

“She did, yes, and it’s the only thing she’s done that’s fair.”

“None of this is fair, son. It’s not fair that Robert died, or that Jason changed the way he did. It’s not fair for your mother to worry so much, or for any of this to land on you. Just work with me. Stay away from Jason, at least for a little while.”

“He’s my brother.”

“I know he is, but there are things about Jason you don’t know.”

“What? That he did drugs? That he killed people in the war?”

My father frowned and studied the floor, less certain than he used to be. “Three or four days, just a little while.”

“You should have told me he was back.”