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Danny looks at Beau.

“He stays,” I say, before he can ask it. I don’t look at Beau when I say it. I keep my eyes on Danny. “Whatever it is, he stays.”

Something moves through Danny’s face — surprise, maybe, that I’ve got someone I’d say that about, that the kid who taught herself to need nobody has gone and planted a flag in a person. He nods slow. He looks at Beau again, properly this time, the once-over an older brother gives, top to bottom, and Beau holds it. Doesn’t puff up. Doesn’t shrink. Just stands there at my shoulder being exactly his size.

“You’re the hockey one,” Danny says.

“Beau.” He puts his hand out. “Sir.”

“Don’t sir me, I’m twenty-eight.” But Danny takes the hand, and they do the thing men do where a handshake is a whole conversation, and whatever Danny reads in it must pass, because his shoulders come down a quarter inch. “Danny. I’m the brother.”

“I know,” Beau says. “She talks about you.”

And that — that lands somewhere in Danny he wasn’t braced for, I watch it go in, because I don’t talk about anyone, and he knows that better than anybody alive. He covers it the way we both cover things, with motion, looking around for somewhere to sit.

We sit. Danny takes the armchair. I take the couch and Beau takes the cushion next to me, close, his knee against mine, and I’m grateful for the warmth of it in a way I’ll resent later.

“Okay,” I say. “Headline.”

“Dad got arrested Thursday night.”

And there it is. The past, walking clean through a door I bolted two years ago and changed my name to keep shut. I go still and I feel Beau notice it and decide to be a wall instead of a fuss, and I love him for it in a flat far-off way I can’t reach right now.

“For what?” I ask, terrified of the answer.

“You want the headline or the list?”

“The list. You do headlines, I do lists. We settled the division of labor around 2009.”

The corner of his mouth moves, the gallows thing we share, the only thing that ever passed for cheer in that house. “DUI. He put the truck through the Snyders’ fence out on Route 9. He’s fine, before you ask.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know. I’m narrating for the cheap seats.” A flick of his eyes toward Beau, who’s gone very still and very large at my side. “He’s fine. That’s the DUI. The DUI’s not why I got on a plane.”

“So tell me why.”

He takes a second he doesn’t want, inhaling deeply as if to brace himself for what comes next. I feel myself do the same. “They only picked him up because somebody called it in first. Woman named Renata.”

“Who’s Renata?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Danny. Who’s Renata?”

“His girlfriend.” He watches me take it, the way you watch someone take a hit to see if the knees hold. “About a year now. She lives there. In the house.”

“In the house.” I hear my own voice flatten. “Since when does Dad have a girlfriend living in that house that I’m finding out about from an arrest record?”

“Since I found out from the sheriff’s office, Sloane, because I’m somehow still next of kin on a form he filled out.” He drags a hand down his face. “I didn’t keep her from you. There was nothing to keep. He doesn’t send me updates either.”

“Why’d she call it in?” Level. Even. I already know. I knew the shape of it the second he said her name, because I know the architecture of that house and I know what gets built in it.

“Because he put her into a wall.” Flat. Gentle. My brother, handing me the worst of it the way you’d hand someone something hot. “Fractured cheekbone, broken arm. She pressed charges and she’s not dropping them. That’s why it’s not the drunk tank and a fine. It’s assault. He’s looking at real time.”

“When’s the arraignment?” I ask, because logistics I can hold; logistics have edges I can get my hands around.

“Wednesday.”