Page 67 of The Night We Lost Him

“How do you know?”

“She got married two weeks ago, for starters.”

“What?”

He nods. “The guy is a friend of her older brother’s. She says they didn’t get involved until after we broke up, but I don’t know. I don’t know how she defines involved,” he says. “He’s an orthodontist named Sherman. He runs triathlons and plays the drums in a local band. And he’s fucking old. He’s older than you.”

“Thanks for that.”

“You want to meet him? His office is around the corner.”

“No, I do not.”

“He’s got teenagers. She loves them. She loves him. She moved into his house after telling me she would never leave the farm.” He pauses. “I thought I was the problem, you know? That our family was too messed up for her, or she didn’t want to deal with living in a city, or I waited too long to ask her to marry me… but I just thought wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was all of those things and none of them,” he says. “She just wanted him.”

I feel that in my own chest, in my own heart—what is breaking open in him. What he has lost. What, apparently, he is wondering if he ever had.

Two weeks ago. Sam had to come to grips with this heartbreak two weeks ago—two and a half weeks after losing our father. Too soon after deciding that losing our father wasn’t what it appeared to be.

I ask the question, gently.

“So… why did you want to stop here?”

“Can’t help it. She’s always where I want to stop.”

* * *

Sam stares out the window.

He is lost in thought. And clearly not interested in talking.

I focus on driving, the snow coming down harder now, blanketing the farmland, fogging up the windshield. We are moving slowly, but I don’t want to run out of time. I don’t want to drop my brother off without being there for him. And sometimes being there for someone means staying quiet. But sometimes it means telling him the one thing no one else has managed to say.

“Have people been telling you that Dad is still with you?”

He keeps his eyes fixed on the window, not answering.

“Because they keep saying that to me. That he is with me. It sometimes helps to hear that and it sometimes just reminds me how alone I feel since losing him, like I had this invisible safety net underneath me my entire life and now it’s just gone…”

“I think we hang out with different people.”

“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t always make the best decisions when we’re grieving,” I say.

“Meaning what exactly? I shouldn’t have shown up to see my married ex-girlfriend today?”

“That. And also you may want to hold off on sending out any wedding invitations until you’re sure that’s what you actually want.”

He turns and looks at me. “I thought we established that you’re not the best person to be giving me advice.”

“It’s not exactly advice,” I say. “More like an observation.”

As if on cue, my phone starts buzzing. A calendar reminder comes up on the screen: ELLIOT/AUSTIN. It’s a reminder for Austin’s piano recital. Village Auditorium. 11:30 a.m. tomorrow. I flip the phone over, but not before Sam spots the name Elliot.

“What’s that about an observation?”