He said it with a real, warm, unforced smile, the smile of a boy stating a plan, not the strained, performing kindness that adults sometimes aimed at my sister and that she could always, always tell was fake.

Gemma clapped her hands together and beamed at him, breathless with the pure delight she brought to every good thing.

“You heard him, Nora,” she said, spinning to me, her dark curls bouncing.

“Gabriel said it.” Gabriel said it.

As though his saying it made it law.

And here is the thing I understand now that I did not understand then: for Gemma, his saying it did make it law, because Gabriel had never once, in all the years she had known him, said a kind thing to her that he did not mean.

Other people made my sister promises the way you toss a coin to be rid of a beggar, promises designed to produce a moment’s happiness and then be forgotten.