And his answer was to call me a jealous failure and, within hours, to steal a quarter of a million dollars more from a man who was at that moment lying in a hospital bed unable to sign his own name.

That was when the last of the hope went out of me, cleanly, and something steadier took its place.

I stopped grieving the brother I wished I had.

You cannot appeal to a person’s better nature if the appealing is itself the thing they take as weakness.

Leon had shown me, that afternoon, the exact bottom of himself, and it turned out there was no floor down there at all.

After that, I stopped trying to save him and started, only, making sure he could not take anyone else down with him.