The back rent is mine.

I’m not going to stand on this porch and trade it with you.

The bank has Delroy’s signed confession and twenty years of records, and that’s going where the law says it goes.

What you do about your part of it is between you and a lawyer.

But you’re not going to sleep another night in Mama’s house.”

I watched him try to find the old handle, the one that had always worked in our family — the appeal to blood, to being kids together, to letting old things stay buried.

“We’re family,” he started.