“I think I win,” I said, with a bit too much confidence. He met my eyes, and it wasn’t challenge or confidence or anything of my dad or my mom in that gaze. Sadness, and not because he’d lost a game he wasn’t really playing. The last word of my statement came out late “…though.”

He focused on patching me up.

“I didn’t want this for you kids,” he said, quiet. “I’m terrified of it happening to mine.”

I followed his gaze. At the very front of the room, a slender woman with a mane of black hair tied back with a scarf held a child that might have been six or so years old. Another one shifted restlessly at her feet, blocked from my view by the pews.

“Sorry,” he said.

“About?” I asked.

“It feels like every time I say something about this family, it’s critical.”

“I think that’s the way it goes, isn’t it?” I asked him. “We have our good points, but we have a lot that’s worth criticizing.”

“Who’s in your corner and who isn’t?” he asked, very carefully.

Was he asking to be careful? To gauge where my allegiances lay?

“Can I master–stranger you?” I asked him.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Penetrating questions from someone I don’t know all that well.”

“You really are your mother’s daughter, hm?” he asked.

“Can I verify you? Can you tell me things only you would know?”

“You had a stuffed lion, once.”

I gave him one nod.

“I remember…” his voice was almost wistful. “Maybe it was Crystal, but I think it was you. You were small, no older than my kids are now. You were lying on the floor of the living room, and your parents had a horrible carpet, like a scrub brush you’d keep by the sink. You stared up at the ceiling and you said, over and over again, ‘I wish I was a superhero’. With conviction and emphasis and constant repetition, sometimes yelling it, as if you could make it happen with sheer force of will and determination. Sometimes you’d pound your fist on the floor.”

I smiled. “I almost forgot that.”

He wore no smile. Just a bit of a sad expression.

“Well, you’re verified, I think,” I told him. “You’re my uncle or you’re a very good mind reader, and if you’re that good a mind reader, there’s nothing I can do anyway.”

He nodded.

“Crystal’s in my corner,” I said. I glanced back. A few people had vacated the church, and there was nobody really in earshot, so long as we spoke quietly. “Everyone else has kind of let me down.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence.

“Sutures,” he warned me, holding up the curved needle. “I’m a little out of practice.”