My brother-in-law was wearing my father’s bathrobe.That was the first thing I really saw. Before the mud on the floor. Before the dog hair on the recliner. Before my father sitting on a kitchen chair in the corner of his own living room, staring at his shoes.

Marcus was leaning against the kitchen counter in a thick white cotton robe. I knew that robe. I’d bought it six weeks earlier at a department store in Providence. I’d stood in the aisle for ten minutes feeling different fabrics, because my father gets cold in the mornings and I wanted him to have something warm.

Marcus had the sleeves pushed up. He was on his phone.

“Right on the water, man,” he was saying. “The whole summer, rent-free. I’m telling you, we are set.”

Then he turned around and saw me standing in the doorway with a chocolate cake in my hands.

He didn’t look guilty. He looked annoyed, like I was a delivery that had come on the wrong day.

He ended the call. He looked at my father. Then he pointed at him.

“This is a family home,” Marcus said. “He needs to accept that.”

Behind me, on the couch, my sister laughed.