It could happen at any time. The sky was gray; there was ice on the ground. And then I saw that Ned was crying. He was quiet about it. He didn’t make a sound. I don’t think I’d ever seen him do that before, so I quickly looked away. And then the coffin looked different. Shut tight. Over and done.

At my grandmother’s service, Ned and I were the only mourners. Same kind of plain pine box, same graveyard. We had never gotten around to putting a marker on my mother’s grave, and I was glad of this. I didn’t want to know exactly where she’d been buried. Maybe she hadn’t been buried at all. Maybe I’d been wrong and she had indeed flung open the wooden box to run through the dark and the cold the moment we’d left the gravesite. I looked for footprints, though it had been more than twenty years. Only the scratch scratch of birds. And something else — the tracks of a fox.

Ned had not only handled my grandmother’s affairs, he’d already done the research needed to set my life in order as well. He had found me a job, at the public library in Orlon, and a cottage to rent only a few blocks from the university campus. We debated the merits of a move. Statistically, the odds weren’t on Ned’s side. Had money been involved, I would have bet my future consisted of twenty more years in my grandmother’s house, wearing my bathrobe. But my brother was a worthy opponent, methodical if nothing else, and a challenge never deterred him, even if that challenge was me.

While I was moping about and eating cornflakes, Ned packed up the house, called the real estate agent, had new tires put on my car. And so it was. I was leaving New Jersey. My colleagues wanted to give me a going-away party at the library, but without me, there was no one to organize it. I took the cat with me. I had no choice. Giselle jumped in the car and made herself comfortable on my brother’s jacket, ensuring that Ned would sneeze all the way down to Florida.