Virgil lived on the second floor of a narrow house with green asbestos siding and a porch that sagged on one corner. There were moving boxes stacked on the porch under a blue tarp, and a recliner with a SOLD sign taped to it. Eamon pulled up in front and put the car in park and left the engine running and sat with his hands on the wheel at ten and two.
"Monday," he said, without turning his head. "Bayfront Manor. What time?"
Virgil, with his hand on the door handle, went still.
"I'm just asking."
"Nine," Virgil said. "A man from the church is coming with a van. For the chair and the boxes. There's not much."
Eamon nodded. He didn't say anything else. After a while Virgil opened his door and began the long business of getting out, and I got out of the back to help, and Eamon stayed where he was, and I walked the old man up the four porch steps, cane and foot, cane and foot, with the rain finally beginning to let up into a fine cold mist off the lake.
At the door he turned around and looked at me. He had his key out, on a ring with a plastic tag from a hardware store, and he could not get it into the lock, and I took it from him, gently, and opened the door, and gave him back the key.
"I'm going to give you back your six dollars and forty cents," he said.
"No, you're not."
"I'll find a way."
"Pay somebody else back," I said. "That was the deal."
He looked at me for a long time. Then he reached up, slowly, with his shaking right hand, and I knew what he was going to do and I let him. He touched my chin. Just the tip of his thumb, very lightly, on the little white fishhook of a scar. His hand was trembling so hard I felt it like a hummingbird. Then he took it away.
"You turned out," he said. "You turned out all right. That's all I— Your mother was right. I don't get to choose what you kept. But you turned out."
Then he went inside, and closed the door, and I heard the lock turn, on the second try.
I walked back down to the car. Eamon was still sitting at ten and two. I got into the front seat this time, where the old man had been, and the seat was still warm, and I pulled the door shut and we sat there in front of the narrow green house with the engine running.
"I'm not going to forgive him," my brother said.
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
He put the car in drive. Then he put it back in park. He took his hands off the wheel and put them over his face and sat like that, and his shoulders started to shake, and I put my hand on the back of his neck the way our mother used to do to both of us when we were sick, and I left it there, and I did not say anything, and the wipers went back and forth on the glass, clearing it and clearing it, although the rain had almost stopped.