I looked down at our joined hands, and then up at the two rows of uniforms, and then over at my brother.

Colby was in the front row, wiping his face, and it was not grief on it — it was relief, enormous and shaking.

For years Colby had lived crushed under my father’s shadow, pushed into a job at the dealership he hated, told daily and in a hundred ways that he was a disappointment.

I understood, watching him, that my father’s fall was not only my rescue.

It was my brother’s, too.

The shadow that had darkened both our whole lives had just been walked down the front steps in handcuffs.