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I always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there'd be a lot of crying and commotion.

Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange somehow.

"Has he been sick?"

Kate shakes her head.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in twenty years."

There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself and half to me.

"Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about his money. That's all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him money to invest. That's the last time I saw him. He has an old house way up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even wh

"Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?"

"He's had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She'd buy him day-old bread and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him fine—saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she'll get his money now, if he left any. That's what she's bee

Twenty years, I think.

That's a long time not to be speaking to your own brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away.

I wonder.

She couldn't just not give a hoot about him.

They must have been real mad at each other.

And mad at the whole world, too.

Makes you wonder what kind of parents they had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the other only money.

Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between the ears, and it hits me: there isn't a person in the world she loves or even hates.

I like cats fine, too, but if I didn't have people that mattered, it wouldn't be so good.

I say "So long" quietly and go out.

"I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives."

That's what Mom says when I tell her about Kate's telegram.

"And now she's lost her only brother. That's sad."

"I think it's sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these years I've wished I had a brother," I say.

Ch16. Fortune

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