CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CONNECTICUT, AGE TWENTY-TWO
The chicken cutlets were roasting in the oven, swimming with diced potatoes in a lemon butter sauce Melanie had helped to prepare.
The table was set, and the house was as clean as it was going to be. Although there wasn't a whole lot I could do about the chipping paint or loose floorboards at the moment, the place didn't look all that bad, and the clock had been wound.
Luke had even trimmed his beard and ironed a button-down shirt to wear with his jeans. “In case I'm about to meet my future sister-in-law,” he said with a wink, and as he passed me in the upstairs hallway, I knew my cheeks had turned three shades deeper.
I was nervous and—dare I say it—excited.
Melanie left their room, wearing a pretty pink dress and white high heels. Her hair was curly, her lips were glossy, and out of nowhere, an image of my mom crashed against me, hard and fast.
I thought of the last time I'd seen her alive. All made up and happy. I couldn't remember ever seeing someone more beautiful. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her like that—if I ever had before—and that was how I felt now, looking at Melanie.
Pretty and happy, and those attributes never should've become a rarity.
Tell her he was at the bar.
Give her the fuel she needs to finally leave.
“What?” She laughed awkwardly, fastening a necklace behind her neck.
“You look really nice,” I complimented, lifting one side of my mouth in a small, melancholy smile.
Her smile rounded the apples of her cheeks. She glanced down at her flowy dress, pinching the fabric between her fingers and spreading it wide, like a princess about to curtsy.
“It feels good to get all dressed up for once,” she replied, hints of excitement and disappointment in her tone.
Like she enjoyed channeling this part of herself.
Like she hated that her life didn't allow for it more often.
“And, hey”—she looked up to gesture toward me and my black button-down and black slacks—“you look pretty nice yourself.”
I chuckled. “I mean, honestly, I feel kinda stupid, but since you guys were getting dressed up …”
Melanie shrugged and stepped forward to loop her arm through mine, steering us toward the stairs. “Nothing wrong with pretending to be something you're not every now and then, Charlie. Makes the rest of it feel almost bearable.”
I worried my bottom lip between my teeth as we descended the stairs. It was all I could do to keep the secret I held from spilling from my mouth with the lifeblood of her relationship with my brother.
***
Jersey drove a hearse.
Its sleek black paint job and matching leather seats had been a dream come true for the past few months we’d been dating. But now, seeing it pull into the driveway of my childhood home, I wanted to puke.
Melanie and Luke were busy in the kitchen, making sure everything was ready and just right. They reminded me of how my parents had been when Luke first brought Melanie home to meet them, and to see my brother and that same girl giving me the same treatment warmed my heart, but did nothing to calm my raging nerves.
So, with an entire army of butterflies alive and well in my stomach, I slipped outside to greet my girlfriend.
Jersey climbed out of the driver’s seat, wearing a black-and-white striped dress—very Beetlejuice -esque—and black creeper shoes. Her mile-long legs were bare, every one of her traditional-style tattoos on full display, and it took everything in my power to not forget all about dinner and demand we go back to her place. The only thing I’d like more than that dress on her—with its corseted back and strappy neckline—was for it to be lying on the floor, forgotten.
I walked slowly down the steps, keeping my hands tucked deep in my pockets. I watched her smooth out her bleached-white hair in the driver’s side mirror. She checked her blood-red lipstick, running the tip of her long fingernail around the edge of her mouth before sliding off her cat-eye sunglasses to assess her makeup.
That was when she noticed me approaching, and that was when she smiled.
God, I loved her smile.
I loved everything about her.
“Hey, babe,” she whispered breathlessly, speaking like she never thought she’d see me again, as if she hadn’t just seen me a few nights before.
“Hey.”
“You look nice.” She reached out to trace one finger down the seam along my buttoned front.
“You look …” I let my eyes roam over her hourglass figure, then back up again to her ice-princess eyes. “Wow.”
Jersey laughed, her eyes twinkling like diamonds in the setting sun. “Is that the best you can do? Wow ?”
“I’ll do better later,” I mumbled, sliding my hand around her waist, pressing my palm to her lower back, and pulling her toward me.
Her hands flattened against my chest, and her head tipped back. “Why not now?”
“Because”—I lowered my mouth to hers, allowing my eyes to close before impact—“I’d rather do this first …”
Kissing Jersey was nearly as good as the sex we had, and if I hadn’t known how good the sex was, I would’ve been content to kiss her for the rest of my life.
She kissed with passion, like every moment might be the last. She held the back of my head, gripped the front of my shirt, and plunged her pierced tongue into my mouth the moment my open mouth met hers. Every tug of hair, every stroke of metal against flesh, caused an ache so deep that I throbbed with it and wished she would take that hand against my chest and lay it over the front of my pants instead.
Her body was flush against mine, and as she slipped her tongue from my mouth, she hummed with salacious delight.
“Poor baby,” she whispered, tracing my lower lip with her fingernail. “Too bad we have to go inside and have dinner with your family. Otherwise, I’d get on my knees right here and—”
“Charlie! Where the fuck did you—oh. My bad.”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of my brother’s loud, obnoxious voice, followed by the door closing behind him, and shook my head as Jersey took a step back.
“Sorry,” I grumbled for some reason.
“No, it’s fine,” she said, laughing gently. Her cheeks were flushed, her lipstick smudged. “I’ll take a rain check. Show me your room later.”
“Oh shit,” I said, grinning like an excited teenager as she checked the mirror once again to fix her makeup. “I’ve never had sex in my room before.”
She turned to me with mischief and anticipation, taking my hand. “Oh, no? I thought you had a girlfriend before.”
“Yeah, but we never did that in my room. Usually the living room or basement when my brother wasn’t home,” I said, remembering Amanda for the briefest moment and pushing her away just as quickly. “Luke would’ve tormented me back then.”
We climbed the steps to the door as she laughed, and I found myself chuckling along with her.
“Oh, but he won’t torment you now?”
“Oh, he will,” I said along the waves of laughter. “But I’ll mess with him right back. The guy sounds like an ape when he’s getting laid. It’s about time I told him.”
I took a page from Luke’s book and winked at her as I pushed the door open. She was grinning and holding my gaze with a desire I couldn’t believe would be directed at me, and yet there it was. It never failed to astound me. Someone so beautiful, so confident, so put together in ways I could only dream to be … she could’ve chosen anyone. Yet she had chosen me , and I knew I’d never stop thanking the fates at hand for making that happen.
But then we stepped into the living room. Her sparkling eyes left mine to survey the room, only to land on something—or someone maybe—and that smile dropped immediately, and the twinkle in her eyes dulled to nothingness.
“What?” I asked, turning to follow her gaze, only to find Luke standing there with his hands stuffed into his pockets.
“Hey,” he said as he walked toward us, pulling one hand out to extend toward Jersey.
I didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know why she was so instantly taken aback by the sight of my brother. But I pretended not to notice as I placed a hand on her back.
“Jersey, this is my brother, Luke. Luke, Jersey.”
“Nice to meet you, Jersey,” he said.
She was slow to accept his hand, but when she did, they shook. “Hi, Luke. Nice to meet you too.”
He pulled away, tucking the hand back into his pocket, and turned to me. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
Then, he walked away.
No goading.
No jabs about making out in the driveway.
He just … walked away, leaving me there to wonder if I should thank him for being normal for once or demand to know what the hell was wrong with him … or was it something else? Something I didn't want to acknowledge, something I knew would break my heart and obliterate my soul. And if that were the case …
Maybe I was better off not knowing at all.
***
Luke was a lot of things, but a good actor had never been one of them.
I'd realized that when we were kids and he shattered the glass panel in Mom's clock. The baseball had ricocheted off the pendulum and rolled beneath the dining room table, causing it to stutter, but it kept on ticking as shards of glass sprinkled all over the floor. Luke had stammered in the face of our enraged mother, trying weakly to blame something else, including a ghost that never existed within our walls.
His skills in bullshitting hadn’t improved since. But he probably wished they had though, as he now tried to act like nothing was going on while going out of his way to not look in Jersey’s direction.
And honestly, it wasn’t as if she was any better. I could count the number of words she’d spoken on two hands since we’d sat down to eat.
Melanie and I had so far carried the entire conversation with mundane, robotic small talk neither of us gave a single fuck about. Things like, “What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow?” and, “Did you see that the McDonald’s on the highway got a new sign?” and, “How’re things?” and, “Seen any good movies lately?”
We spoke like strangers. Like people who hadn’t seen each other every day for nearly a decade. It was weird and uncomfortable. But I guessed there wasn’t much else to be said when our focus was more on our significant others and their sudden inability to act like the people we knew them to be.
Every so often, Melanie would meet my eye with raised brows and a gentle nudge of her head in Luke's direction. I'd shrug in response or shake my head, then focus my attention on Jersey and her vow of silence.
“Hey, so, Luke,” Melanie said with ceremony, folding her arms on the table and clearing her throat, like she was about to say the one thing that would break the spell, “I thought we could look at that country club we talked about.”
He shoveled more food into his mouth before turning to her and nodding, never once allowing his eyes to land on the woman sitting across from him. “Yeah, yeah, sure. Sounds good,” he mumbled around a heaping amount of chicken and potatoes.
I nudged Jersey with my elbow and said, “Luke and Melanie are getting married. I can't remember if I mentioned that or not.”
Melanie nodded happily, her lips spread in that wide grin she'd worn earlier that evening.
Before Jersey came and things got weird.
Why did things get so fucking weird when she showed up?
I swallowed and forced a smile as Melanie replied, “We've been engaged for a couple of years, but we only recently got serious about planning the wedding.”
What she didn't say was, she'd been too busy worrying about Luke and keeping him on the wagon to focus on their big day.
What she didn't say was, she'd been unsure if they'd ever make it to their big day in the first place.
“O-oh, wow,” Jersey replied with an awkward stammer, her eyes flitting rapidly between Melanie and Luke. “Married. That's … that's, uh … that’s really cool.”
Does she not want to get married?
The thought flicked angrily at my heart. I would've married Jersey yesterday, if she'd have me.
“I'm the best man,” I chimed in for no real reason other than to say something.
Jersey mumbled a gentle, acknowledging, “Mmm,” as she poked around the plate of her favorite meal that she'd barely touched.
Every second that passed, I berated myself more and more with insults. Things like:
This was a fucking mistake .
What the hell was I thinking?
Why did I let them talk me into this?
And the biggest, baddest, worst one of all: She doesn't really love me .
Nobody could ever love me. I always knew it. Why did I think she was special?
By the time Luke stood up without saying anything and headed into the kitchen, I couldn't take the mental insults anymore and pushed my chair back, following closely on his tail, so close that I knew I had to raise suspicion in the women we'd left at the table.
I cornered my brother at the refrigerator and whispered in a low growl, “You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”
Luke shrugged nonchalantly. “I dunno what you're talking about.”
“No. You're gonna tell me right now why the fuck you're acting so weird.”
He grabbed a bottle of Coke, then closed the fridge door and turned around to meet my eyes as he called, “Hey, babe! You want some more soda?”
I crossed my arms and held his cool, stony glare as Melanie replied, “Yeah, sure, thanks!”
My brother stepped around me, but before he could pass, he stopped at my side, brushed his shoulder against mine, and whispered, “Just drop it, okay? It's nothing.”
“You know, that's really funny because it doesn't feel like nothing ,” I replied, equally as quiet. “It feels fucking weird . It feels like you … like … I don't know … like you …”
It was when she walked in. When she saw him. When her eyes landed on him.
My gaze widened as my heart plummeted straight to my stomach. “Do … do you know each other?”
“Charlie. Trust me. Drop it.”
Then, the asshole walked away, leaving me to stand there alone in the kitchen while my brain raced blindly, and my heart hammered, and my hands began to shake so badly that I could feel the tremors in my bones.
I spun on my heel and hurried after him.
“Luke,” I hissed, reaching out to grab his shoulder the moment he left the kitchen. “What the f—”
“Don't worry about it, man,” he said, adding a dose of cheer to his voice as our respective significant others turned to look at us.
And that was when Jersey's face fell, and her fork dropped to her untouched plate with a resounding clatter.
“What did you tell him?!” she shrieked, her voice shrill and sounding too unlike her to feel right. “Charlie, it was nothing, okay? I swear it—”
“It what ?” I shouted back, desperate and panic-stricken. “What the hell are you talking about?!”
“Oh my God,” Luke groaned, scrubbing his hand over his face while the Coke bottle dangled at his side.
“Luke, what's going on? What is she talking about?” Melanie asked, her voice and hands now trembling nearly as bad as mine.
With a sigh of resignation, Luke dropped the hand from over his eyes and placed the bottle on the table. Then, he looked at Jersey and pointed a finger right at her. “For your information, I hadn't told him shit. But now, since you've given me no choice, I will . And honestly, he deserves to know since you seem to be incapable of telling the truth,” he spat at her, speaking like the Luke I knew for the first time that night.
Speaking like he knew her.
Then, he turned to me, ignoring the look of wide-eyed shock and growing despair on his fiancée’s face.
“When I was at the bar yesterday, some chick walked up to me and didn't even give me her name before laying one on me. Just”—he slapped a hand against his thigh—”grabbed me and started making out with me like it was totally fuckin' normal to just grab some random dude and shove her tongue down his throat. And I'm sorry to break it to you, man, but that chick, unfortunately, was her.” He jabbed his thumb in her direction. His features softened as he dropped his hand back to his side and shrugged. “I didn't know what to say when she walked in tonight and I got a good look at her. I thought I could get away with saying nothing and just leave it alone, but I can’t. That might be who she is, but it's not me. I'm sorry, Charlie. Seriously, I am.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off violently. I couldn't be touched right now—I wouldn’t . Not while I was letting his words settle in beneath my goose-pimpled skin. Not when all I could envision was her mouth on his. My brother .
God, how the fuck could she do this to me?
God, please don’t let it be true.
“Is he fucking lying?” I asked Jersey, knowing damn well that Luke wasn't typically one to lie to me. He might've stretched the truth. He might've withheld the truth. But he never lied .
And Jersey didn't deny it as she stood from the table, looking now like a succubus and less like the angel I'd thought she was.
“It was Mia,” she tried to explain.
I could only scoff and push my hair back with my hands. “Mia,” I said with a snicker, shaking my head. “ Mia didn’t fucking make out with my brother !”
Jersey flinched, and I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“W-we went to the bar after work, and we saw him sitting there alone. We had a couple of drinks, and we thought it would be funny if—”
“So, it's true,” I accused, hardly able to compute the words I was hearing. “You fucking cheated on me.”
“Charlie, I—”
I thrust my hand in the direction of the front door. “Leave.”
Her icy-blue eyes swam in an ocean of tears as she parted her blood-red lips, letting them flop open and closed a few times before saying, “B-but I-I love—”
“No,” I cut her off, shaking my head and sneering at her gorgeous, perfect, horrible face. “Don’t you dare say that you fucking love me . Get the hell out of my house.”
Stunned, she blew out a deep breath and turned toward the door, unable to look at me, my silent brother, or his defeated fiancée.
For a second, I thought about stopping her. I thought about giving her a second chance and sweeping her stupid, drunken misdemeanor under the rug just this once, like it didn’t matter when it very much did. I barely lurched forward, ready to make a run for it, ready to cut her off before she could make it to the door, when Luke shot his arm out. Blocking me from moving and knocking that last bit of needed sense into me.
She disappeared into the living room, her creepers plodding quietly against the squeaky hardwood floor, and then the front door opened and closed behind her.
That was when it dawned on me that she’d never stalled. She’d never turned around. She’d never begged me to reconsider.
She had just left.
Everyone fucking leaves. Except Melanie .
Melanie never fucking leaves.
Fuck . Melanie .
She had been so quiet ever since the proverbial bomb had dropped, and when I turned to her, I found her still sitting at her place at the table. A dead stare had fallen over her eyes, but her hands shook, and her throat worked relentlessly, swallowing over and over again.
Luke was just as silent, gripping the back of his chair and hanging his head.
“Melanie,” he finally said, and it hurt to hear the magnitude of his pain, thick in his gruff voice.
She didn’t reply, but she closed her eyes and slowly shook her head as one lonely tear escaped from between her lashes.
It fell onto her plate of barely touched lemon chicken.
The last supper.
Panic rose in my throat at the thought.
No, she won’t leave. Melanie never leaves. She’s never too mad at Luke to not forgive him. She’s never mad enough to fall out of love.
“Mel.” Luke lifted a hand to brush the hair off his forehead, only for it to flop back down again. “Come on. Talk to me.”
Yes, please, God, talk to him.
She opened her lips to speak, and nothing but a little whimper passed through. She laid a shaky hand over her eyes and swallowed again, taking a deep, quivering breath, then said, “Luke, I think … I think we’ve talked enough.”
He turned abruptly to look at her, but she didn’t look back.
“What does that mean?”
“It means”—she licked her lips, then gasped on a sob—“I’m done talking.”
He didn’t comprehend. He couldn’t.
His head shook as he turned to me, his eyes begging for help as he said—to her or me, I didn’t know—“I-I don’t get it. We need to talk. We … we need—”
“What the hell is there to say, Luke?” Melanie’s hand hit the table as she turned to face in his direction, and still, her eyes wouldn’t reach his.
“We can talk about what just happened, o-or, um, we can—”
“You didn’t tell me!” she cried, springing to her feet and thrusting her hands against his chest. “You want to fucking talk now , but you didn’t tell me when it happened!”
Tears fell from her eyes, streaming rapidly over her face and dripping from her chin to the floor. And with every one, my heart broke a little more. I wanted to go to her. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and let her cry. I wanted to be there for her, just as we’d been there for each other for so many years.
But I didn’t.
I stayed at my brother’s side. Because I thought, for some reason, he needed me more.
“I didn’t tell you because it didn’t matter,” he admitted in a hushed tone. “She kissed me, and I was caught off guard, but I pushed her away. I never kissed her back. God, you know I wouldn’t, Melanie. You know that. I would never—”
“But you didn’t tell me! Another woman fucking kissed you, and you didn’t say anything! You don’t see that as a problem, Luke?”
He didn’t reply.
Damn him. Why the hell couldn’t he just say something at the right time for once ?
Melanie shook her head, disappointment ablaze in her eyes as she took a step back from my brother.
“What were you doing at a bar?” she asked, and I knew then where the betrayal and disappointment truly lay.
“I wasn’t drinking,” he whispered, telling the truth.
“Oh, bullshit, Luke. Don’t—”
“I’m not lying,” he snapped, thrusting a hand toward me. “Ask Charlie!”
“He didn’t drink,” I was quick to say, taking a step closer to the table.
“I had some water—that’s it. I just needed to—”
“ You knew?” Melanie asked, stunned by the betrayal, her eyes burning a hole right through me. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I—” I stopped myself, shame and anger igniting beneath my skin, and I hung my head as I silently cursed my brother for making me promise not to tell.
Melanie had nothing left to say. She was right; she was tired of talking. Instead, she turned on her heel and hurried out of the dining room and up the stairs, where I assumed she went to pack her things.
I could only drop into a chair, staring at the meal left uneaten as my eyes glazed over with the pain of losing the only person who had kept us together, and asked, “Why aren’t you stopping her?”
“Why didn’t you fight to stop Jersey?”
Fury dried my tears away as I twisted my lips into a snarl and clenched my fists against the table. “Because I don’t want to waste my life on someone who would do shit like that, let alone not tell me—”
“ Right . And don’t you think Melanie deserves to be with someone who feels like that? Because I do, Charlie.” His voice broke as he jabbed his chest with his finger. “I fuckin’ do, and I’m not too blind to see that guy’s not me .”
A torrent of terrible emotion swept over me, and I struggled not to let it take control. I swallowed relentlessly until I was able to reply, “I thought you couldn’t see your life without her.”
He cleared his throat and shrugged, sniffling a little and rubbing his nose, before saying, “That’s because I can’t . But blood is thicker than lies, Charlie. And I wasn’t gonna just”—he gestured at the table—“sit back and wait for that bitch to tell you the truth, knowing damn well it was probably never gonna happen. You needed to know, despite the consequences, so I told you.”
I deflated with my exhale, my heart breaking more with every passing second. “Melanie deserved to know too.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah. She did. And now … we live with the aftermath.”
***
I had left Luke at the table, using the excuse that I needed to get something from my room before creeping upstairs. I passed my room, the bathroom, and the door that always remained closed. When I reached Luke and Melanie’s bedroom, I hesitated before gently rapping my knuckles against the door.
A soft, broken, “Yeah?” came from inside, and I pushed the door open slowly, allowing it to creak quietly against its hinges.
I found her sitting in the middle of the floor, several full garbage bags and a suitcase surrounding her. In her hands was a stack of pictures and pieces of paper.
The top picture was of the three of us—Luke, Melanie, and me—taken a few nights after Tommy’s party.
Before my parents died.
Before Luke and Melanie were much more than friends.
Before adulthood and alcohol and life and pain.
She looked up at me from the picture and barely smiled before looking back at the faces of three kids I hardly recognized now.
“Look at you,” she whispered, warbled by tears.
I suspected she hadn’t stopped crying since entering their room.
Luke’s. It's just Luke’s room now.
“Look at all of us,” I muttered, folding my legs to sit beside her on the cluttered floor.
“Yeah, but you … you’ve changed the most.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that. We had all gone through one transformation or another. Some worse than others. But we had all grown up, and with growing up inevitably came change.
“I’m proud of you,” she added. “I mean, you’re still that nervous worrywart you’ve always been, but … you handle it better. You’ve become such a good guy, Charlie.”
The way she was talking … it sounded like a goodbye, and I hated it.
“Stop talking like you’re never going to see me again,” I said, wrapping my arms around my knees.
She managed to huff a soft laugh, but she didn’t correct herself. I thought she knew as well as I did that our lives were at a crossroads. She was going one way, and I, another, and the likelihood of us crossing paths again was slim.
I knew her leaving was for the better. I knew I’d been wishing for it for years—for her sake. And still, I wished it were different. I wished he— Luke —had been different .
I just wished she wouldn’t leave.
“Thank you,” I found myself saying, unable to look at her.
She swallowed, then quietly hiccupped on a sob. “For what?”
“For staying as long as you did. For cooking, for cleaning, for getting me into therapy, for”—I batted at the single tear that had worked its way from my eye—“being around for me—and Luke, obviously—when no one else was. You did more than anyone your age should’ve had to do, but you did it anyway, and I wish I had thanked you more for that. So … thank you.”
Her head hanging, she sniffled and nodded. “You’re welcome.”
My throat constricted around a hot, heavy knot of emotion as I croaked, “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“I know. But you’re gonna be okay. I know you will be. I’m not so sure about your brother though. I do love him so much, and I don’t want to leave him. I just—”
“I know.”
“But you’ll be okay,” she repeated, as if it made it better. As if it helped to settle the ache in both our hearts to know that, at the end of the day, at least I’d be fine … even if he wasn't.
And that was all because of her.
***
I had left her alone to finish packing, and Luke had remained in the dining room, doing only God knew what.
At some point, I’d somehow fallen asleep, thinking about heartbreak and the people I’d been forced to let go of before I was ready. I woke up to Luke tripping up the stairs and cursing angrily beneath his breath.
That was how I knew she was gone.
He wouldn’t have come upstairs if she were still here.
An ache so deep and great pierced my heart. An emptiness threatened to swallow me whole. God, what would I do without her? What would either of us do? What the hell would our lives look like tomorrow or next week or next year?
I stared at my ceiling long after Luke closed his door at the end of the hall, allowing my tears to silently drip over my cheeks and into the pillow beneath my head. I thought about Jersey. I thought about how none of this would have happened if I’d just picked Luke up when I was supposed to, if I’d never invited her to dinner, if I’d never walked into that coffee shop in the first place.
It was my fault Melanie was gone.
It was my fault we were all hurting.
It was my fault for being too blinded again by love to see that I’d neglected the most important people in my life.
I clambered from my bed to walk down the hall. I needed to apologize to Luke. I needed to tell him that this wasn’t his fault, that Dr. Sibilia had been wrong once upon a time, and this had all once again come down to me . I was the problem here, not him, and even if it wouldn’t bring Melanie back, he had to at least know that I accepted all of this damn blame.
So, I stood in front of the door, ready to knock, when I heard something coming from inside.
Something I hadn’t heard since the day of our parents’ funeral.
Luke was crying, and this time, Melanie wasn’t there to hold him.
And that was also my fault.
I didn’t open the door, didn't want to intrude on his grief and mourning. So, I sank to the floor, sliding my back against the wall, and pressed my forehead to my knees. Then, I cried with my brother, mourning the woman who’d kept our pieces together and wondering what would happen to us once they inevitably fell apart.