slowed it with the palm of her hand. She followed Robbie into the dark.
They walked, and Robbie began to rub his face. When they reached the pool house, he stopped walking and begun rubbing at his face and hair with both hands.
“I feel like I need to get fucked up,” Robbie said, trying to laugh. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“I know,” Knox said. She held her breath, hoping Robbie wouldn’t start to cry. It was like this, with none of them knowing who would need comfort next, or which way a moment would go. She was thinking of liquor. They had drunk a little wine the night before, but something hard might be better, if that’s what Robbie wanted. Tequila wasn’t a bad idea, if she could find any. In fact, it was a pretty good idea.
“Sorry to cuss,” Robbie said. He swung his foot, brushing the top of the grass with it.
Knox smiled. She felt engulfed by affection—almost nauseous with it—for a moment.
“God. Say what you like. I’m not sixty. No, wait—on second thought, go to your room.”
Robbie glanced up. He smiled back at her, though the smile was faint, perfunctory. “Mr. McGaughey came by at lunchtime while you were out. He kept telling me about these old pictures he has of her, from some Fourth of July party I don’t even think I was born for. It’s like, he wouldn’t stop talking about them.”
“People are nuts,” Knox said lamely. She had meant to say ineffectual. Lacking in wherewithal. “They don’t know what to say.” Now she sounded like their mother. She blinked her eyes a few times. Their mother didn’t seem to get it; she didn’t seem upset enough that their father seemed so bad off at the moment. Her father fell into the category of things she wasn’t capable of thinking about for longer than a moment or two. He had stayed in bed for most of the time since they’d been back, a prone shape in the half dark of her parents’ room.
“I almost walked away while the guy was talking to me,” Robbie said. “It’s like … I forgot I was supposed to keep standing there.”
“What do you want me to do,” Knox said to her brother. She hoped, in that moment, that he would ask her to do something impossible, something humiliating. She remembered the truth-or-dare games she had roped Robbie into during the years right after Charlotte left, when Robbie was too young to protest. She had made him eat raw eggs and dog biscuits. She had made him stand in a locked closet for one hour. She had made him climb into one of the haylofts and stick his finger in a rat trap. She had made him kiss her once, his lips pressed inexpertly against hers for whole minutes, after having watched a salacious evening drama some oblivious babysitter had allowed her to stay up for. Ask me to die for you, Knox thought, and I will. Just ask me to. I want to.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Robbie said. “What do you think? No one’s normal.” His voice broke.
Knox went to hug him. He was an inch or two shorter than she; her nose came to rest in his hair, which smelled like cigarette smoke and something sweeter, a leftover shampoo smell. He let her hug him, and then moved out of her arms, wiping his face.
They made their way down to the pool without talking any more. Knox could hear the sprinkler system ratcheting in another part of the yard, its chicka chicka and the audible arc and fall of drops as they rained in near unison against the grass. She could hear her own shoes meeting the walk, and not her brother’s. He picked his way in front of her in the dark.
They reached the pool deck, stopping together near one of the plastic chaises. The two of them stood in place there for a few moments. Robbie put his hands at the small of his thin back and breathed the night air. Knox squatted, bounced on her heels. The pool water itself was black, blacker even than the darkness around them. It lapped quietly against the tiles that lined the sides of the pool. Trying to maintain her balance, Knox scuffed her shoes off one at a time. The brick had trapped the heat of the day and felt warm underneath the tensed soles of her feet. She kept her eyes on the pool surface as