He starts down the stairs and I back away from him. I thought I was backing out the front door, but I got my trajectory wrong and find myself backing into the parlour instead. He follows me in, the shotgun dangling from one hand.

“Man, you should have seen your face,” he says. “I thought you’d piss your panties.” His grin broadens. “Now tell me the truth, did you? You can tell your brother something like that.”

“You can’t hurt me,” I tell him.

“Can’t I? I’m thinking different. But we both know for sure you can’t hurt me, though I got to say, I’m disappointed that you’d try.”

“You’re a monster.”

“Nothing you didn’t make.”

“Bullshit! I didn’t make you. A child doesn’t make an adult want to fuck her—especially not her own brother.”

Del shrugs. “Mama thought different.”

“Mama was as sick as you.”

“Father Cleary told me you confessed to him.”

“Yeah, and then he did me.”

“Can you blame him?” Del asks. “Hot little thing like you, who’s already proved she’ll put out?”

“Goddamn you!”

A funny thing happens then. I step towards him, swinging a little girl’s fist, but by the time I reach him, I’m my normal size and instead of hitting him in the chest, my fist connects with his cheekbone. He staggers back, then does that wavy thing with his free hand, and I fly back and hit the wall behind me.

It knocks the breath out of me, but I get up as quick as I can. My back hurts from where I banged up against the wall and I nurse my hand. The skin’s all broken across the knuckles.

Then I realize that I’m still full-grown.

“Now this is interesting,” Del says. “Turns out you’ve got a smidgeon of backbone still left in you.”

“You—”

“Oh, shut up,” he says.

He waves his hand at me again, and again I bang up against the wall. This time I’m a little girl again.

“There,” he says. “You see? What did that get you? Two seconds of freedom from my will?”

“I don’t—”

“I can do any damn thing I want to you,” he says. “But you know what? If you want things to be like they really are, then why don’t we just do that.”

Another wave of the hand and I’m full-grown again, but not the twenty-something I see myself as in the otherworld. Instead he’s returned me into the Broken Girl: frail and brittle, tottering on weak legs, half my body numb. It’s all I can do to keep standing.

“Now there’s my little sister that the world knows and loves, though what in goddamn hell anyone sees in you looking like that doesn’t make the first bit of sense to me.”

“You know what?” I tell him. “I don’t care.”