Page 10 of The Night We Lost Him

Jack takes this in. And I can see that he knows the answer as well as I do. My brother may not know me well, but he knows me well enough to know that I’d have a hard time just letting this go. Maybe I’ve always been like that to a certain degree, but the technical aspect of my job necessitates an intense focus on such sexy details as safety and energy performance and egress. And now I’m unable to ignore it—whether I’m at work or not. I can’t shake a lingering suspicion when something feels off.

“He wants me to go with him tomorrow,” I say.

“Where?”

“To Windbreak.”

“Seriously?”

“He wants us to take a look around. See if his concerns punch through.”

“To California?” he says.

His tone mirrors how I’m feeling: this is all a little extreme, for me to fly across the country on a hunch. To fly across the country on someone else’s hunch, someone who I barely know, whose motives are still unclear.

“I know it’s insane…”

He pauses, considers. “I didn’t say that.”

Then he looks at me, that look he gives me when he’s waiting for me to catch up to what he already knows I need to do. The only other person in my life who was able to do that, to know what I needed almost before I did, was my mother. With her it felt like safety—to be seen and understood like that. With Jack, it has always felt that way too. At least it used to. But since losing my father, my connection to Jack (its tenderness, its depth) has felt like something else. Something closer to a threat.

“I’ll go with you,” he says. “If you need to do this, I’ll come.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

I see something pop in Jack’s eyes, the sting of it, the surprise. “Well, you don’t have to ask,” he says.

I look down, not saying anything. What is there to say? I know he senses what I haven’t wanted to talk with him about: since my father died, I have kept Jack at a distance. I have kept almost everyone at a distance. Closeness, especially closeness to Jack, stings too much. Like my most visceral reminder of what I’ve lost. Of what I stand to lose.

Even if Jack gets it, the distance is like its own kind of injury—to him and to me—especially considering that historically and effortlessly, Jack has been the person I most want to reach for.

So far, he has refused to punish me for it. He has tried to give me ample room to do what I’m doing. To grieve.

He takes my hand and kisses my palm, soft and quick. The safety of his touch, of him, rises up to comfort me, in spite of myself.

“I’ll be home later,” he says. “Get some rest.”

Then he is opening the office door and heading back to work and away from me. I call out after him.

“Jack,” I say. “Wait.”

He is just outside the office door. He must hear me. I know he hears me.

But he doesn’t turn back, probably because he already knows that if he does, I have nothing else to say.

* * *

At midnight, I can’t sleep.

Jack is still at the restaurant. I get out of bed and head downstairs to my small home office, roll open the window, the cold flow of air moving me all the way to wide-awake.

I take a seat at my drawing table, ready to get to work. I have a proposal due for a project in West Chelsea—a children’s bookstore that two retired book editors are opening near the Highline.

I’m hoping the quiet of the house will help me focus, but I spot the blue folder on the edge of the table and I’m back in my conversation with Sam. I’m circling back through it—trying to make it click into place—when my phone starts buzzing.

I look down to see a familiar name splash across my screen, a text coming in from ELLIOT.

Can you talk?

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