Chapter 26: The Little Brother

"Not tonight," I said to Chan. "I'll tell you. Not tonight."

He nodded and didn't ask twice.

I didn't sleep. At six I put on my boots and told them I was going for my cat.

Chan was on the porch before I had the truck door open.

"I'm coming."

"Hood down?"

"Hood down," he said, and got in.

He sat on the café steps with a coffee Odette brought out to him, in plain view of Harbour Road, while I went in.

Odette had the kitchen light on and the radio off.

She was standing at the counter in her dressing gown with the tabby under one arm, and she put the cat in my hands before I asked.

"Constable rang me last night," she said. "She said a man had put your brother in a letter."

I held the cat against my chest.

She smelled of lasagna and warm bread, and she butted my chin with her whole head.

"Sit," Odette said.

"I'm fine."

"Mara Larkin, sit down at my table."

I sat.

She put a plate of toast in front of me and a cup of tea beside it and sat across from me with her hands folded.

She waited, which is the cruelest thing Odette does.

"I never told you," I said.

"I know you didn't. Twelve years I've known you, and you said brother once, drunk, at my sister's wedding."

"He was thirty-five."

"All right."

"He was my little brother, and he drank."

I hadn't said it aloud in years.

The word came out ordinary, with nothing wrong with it.

"He drank the way our father drank," I said. "Our mother left because of it when I was nine, and I stayed, and I learned the job."

"What job?"

"Covering. I'd phone his boss and say he had the flu. I paid his rent twice. I told our father he was at work."

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