Mott or not, it had become a ritual, weather permitting. Most of the day staff recognized her by now; Sandra knew the majority of them by name. “Another hot one today,” the attending nurse said, helping Sandra help her brother out of bed and into a wheelchair. “But Kyle likes the warm weather, I think.”

“He likes the shade of the trees.”

That was, of course, a surmise. Kyle hadn’t expressed a preference for the shade of the trees or for anything else. Kyle couldn’t walk or control his bowels or speak a coherent sentence. When he was distressed he scrunched up his face and made a hooting sound. When he was happy—or at least not unhappy—he grimaced in a way that showed his teeth and gums: an animal’s smile. His happy-sounds were soft sighs, formed deep in his throat. Ah, ah, ah, ah.

Today he seemed happy to see Sandra. Ah. He turned his face toward her as she wheeled him down the stone-paved pathway and across the green lawn to the live oaks. The nurse had put an Astros cap on him, to keep the sun out of his eyes. The baseball cap threatened to fall off as he craned his neck. Sandra straightened it for him.

There was a picnic table in the grove, more for visitors than for the patients, most of whom weren’t ambulatory. Today she and Kyle had the grove to themselves. The shade, and a moist coolness that seemed to rise up from the creek, made the heat tolerable and almost pleasant. There was, thank God, a breeze. The oak leaves trembled and seined the light.

Kyle was five years older than Sandra. Before what the doctors called his “accident,” Sandra had always been able to share her troubles with him. He had taken his role as big brother seriously, though he joked about it. “I don’t have any advice for you, Sandy,” he used to say. He was the only person she would allow to call her Sandy. “All my advice is bad advice.” But he had always listened, carefully and thoughtfully, and that was the important thing.

She still liked talking to him, though he couldn’t understand even a syllable of what she said. His eyes followed her when she spoke, perhaps because he liked the sound of her voice, and she wondered, despite what the neurologists said, whether there was still some fragment of working memory inside him, an ember of awareness that might occasionally flicker with recognition.

“I’m in a little bit of trouble these days,” she began.

Ah, Kyle said, a sound as gentle and meaningless as the rustling of the leaves.

*   *   *

It was the Spin that had killed her father and ruined her brother.