Kevin was Andre’s little brother. He had gone down on a motorcycle on the Jones Falls Expressway in June, in the rain, at thirty-one years old. Leon had cut Andre’s hair for the funeral and had not charged him and had not said much, because there was not much to say, and Andre had sat in the chair with his eyes closed the whole time and had thanked him afterward in a voice like gravel.
“Nine years,” Leon said.
“He got sober the year after Jayden was born. You never asked why he stopped. You never asked anything. You just liked that he didn’t.” She said it without heat, as a fact, and somehow that was worse. “We decided not to tell you. I decided. I didn’t want you looking at him the way—” She stopped again.
“The way what?”
“The way you’d look at him. The way you’re looking right now.”
Leon turned toward the sink and gripped its cold porcelain edge with both hands. In the front room, through the curtain, he could hear Quentin’s clippers start up again, and Odell beginning, quietly, on a different story, and the television announcing a pitching change.
“Tell me the rest,” he said to the sink.