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I count it anyway. I’ve counted every dollar that’s gone to my brother since I was twenty-one. I’ve never told him, and I’ve never resented it.

I take out my wallet, then the stub. 1,400,000 on the blank side in blue pen. There’s room under it. I write 11,406 beneath it. I draw a line, but leave the total blank. It hasn’t changed.

I fold the wallet over it and put it back in my pocket.

I sleep eleven hours.

I have no memory of deciding to. I lie down on top of the bed at nine on Thursday night with my boots off, jeans still on. I wake to the phone ringing on the floor beside my head, light lying flat across the ceiling.

“Kieran.” It’s Dev from equipment. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not here.”

I sit up. The clock says 8:12. The alarm is set for 6:30, but I didn’t hear it. The screen says nine missed. My mouth tastes stale, my head is thick, and my hip has gone solid in the joint the way it does when I haven’t moved for a long time.

“Ten minutes,” I say.

“Take twenty. Nobody’s noticed. Nils is in with the video guys until nine.” A pause. “You sick?”

“I’m fine.”

I sit on the edge of the bed with the phone in my hand.

The last night I slept through was a Tuesday in late March. I know because a man called the next morning from a number with no name on it. He asked whether I knew about my brother’s arrangements, his voice completely calm. I’ve woken up at three or four every night since for eight months. I’ve played fifty-one games inside those eight months, winning twenty-nine.

Eleven hours of sleep. All that changed was Marek turning off the alerts.

I sit there a while longer with my elbows on my knees. Outside, a gull works at a scrap on the balcony rail. The light is wrong for eight in the morning: too high, too white. The room has the stale smell of a man who’s slept too long with the heat on.

I haven’t slept eleven hours since I was nineteen and had a concussion.

I get up, shower too long. When I come out, I check the phone to see whether the bank has sent anything. It hasn’t. I put the phone down, pick it up, check again.

Fin’s yard is out past the rail crossing on the east side, a half acre of gravel behind a chain-link fence with a shipping container he uses for tools and a portable office on blocks. I go on Saturday morning because we don’t play until seven.

The gate is padlocked.

Not his lock. His lock is a brass one with a green tag on it that he’s had since I was in high school. This is a new one, heavy, and there’s a chain through the gate that I don’t recognize.

He’s in the office. The door is open. He stands at the little counter with the kettle going, splinted hand held to his chest. With his left, he wipes a counter that’s already clean.

“Kieran! Hey. You want tea? I’ve got tea, the good bags, the ones Marla left.”

“Why’s your gate locked?”

“Because it’s a yard. You lock a yard.”

“Not with a chain, you don’t.”

He puts the cloth down and picks it up again.

“A guy came Thursday,” he says.

My stomach drops.

“Not like that. Not like that, Kieran. Sit down. It’s not like that.” He’s talking fast now, the tea forgotten, his hand moving with the sentences. “He came in a gray coat, real polite. Had a folder. He asked how many I had on the books. I said six. He asked how far behind. Eleven weeks. Which it is—was. Kieran, Marcus has a baby coming. Tony’s been with me nine years. I haven’t been able to look at either of them since October.”