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had been as turbulent as a hurricane. In spite of that, I’d never heard him actually speak ill of his parents—in fact he was a hell of a lot more forgiving of their foibles than I would have been—but their double-edged passion for each other had been a disaster for their children, Michael and his brother, Malachi, who was a few years younger. Michael had been their meal ticket during low times—they’d parade him out to sing and play guitar in any little honky-tonk or hole-in-the-wall lounge they could find to pay them. Michael laughed about it and said it was those times that had made him a musician in the end, but I hated to think of him, skinny and gawky at nine or twelve, singing in some dive in Texarkana.
    He did it because he could, because he had to, because the family needed him to do it. And because he was fiercely, deeply, rabidly protective of his little brother.
    Malachi. I’d never met him, and considering I’d known Michael for two decades, that was saying something. They got together sometimes, but Michael always met him someplace private, and they’d go off and have a few days of good-old-boy fishing or some such thing. His brother led adventure tours all over the world, and it almost seemed that Michael had to chase and capture his brother each time he wanted to see him; that Malachi was so restless he couldn’t bear to light in one place for more than three minutes at a time.
    Case in point: for six months, I’d been trying to find the mysterious Malachi. I’d written letters to a post office box number in—of all places—Biloxi, Mississippi, where he stopped for rest when he wasn’t wandering the world in search of Hemingwayesque adventures.
    Not that Michael knew that I’d written. He didn’t want his brother here, either. I’d had to riffle through Michael’s things in search of Malachi’s address when it became clear that he wasn’t going to tell either his paroled father or his footloose brother that he was dying and they ought to come visit. I couldn’t find an address for the father, but I’d written to Malachi. Repeatedly. No answer.
    A fact I’d finally decided was for the best. What kind of man is named Malachi, anyway? I’d seen some photos, but there was always something wrong with them—a streak of light that obscured his face, or a weird blob of color that rendered him all but invisible. He was as big as Michael had been, and dark where Michael was fair, but that was really all I’d ever been able to make out. And that he was one of those rough and ready guys. I imagined him posing with a dead fish the size of a small boat or running with the bulls in Spain—something I knew for a fact that he’d actually done and struck me as completely insane—or putting his foot on the side of some precious animal he’d slain. He probably carried a knife in his boot and swilled liquor made of alligator blood.
    A magpie flitted over the fields just beyond my feet, screaming a warning, and it startled me so much I realized I’d nearly drifted off. Blinking, I straightened and looked over at Michael to discover he had fallen asleep. It pierced me. In the bright afternoon light, the blue veins running beneath the thin white skin of his temple were clearly visible. His big nose, once so aggressively sexy, seemed to be only bone, and his beautiful hands were whittled down to knuckles.
    But here, on my aunt Sylvia’s porch, he could doze in the quiet. He could look at the blue, blue sky and listen to birds twittering in the trees. He could sleep at night without hearing sirens or worrying about how we’d get the rent or any of those things. He had Shane. He had me. He had my sister Jordan, who knew how to make him feel better in ways that were beyond me and how to check his medicine and nag doctors when things didn’t feel right.
    I wished he also had Malachi. I went inside to write another letter.

SHANE’S GREEN EGGS AND HAM
    This was my favorite story when I was a kid, and my