Page 102 of The Night We Lost Him

I laugh, and he leans against the railing.

“Paul knew, didn’t he?” Sam asks. “I mean, he told us himself that he walked into it with open eyes. But I guess he just… needed to see it for himself.”

“To see what?”

“Where he stood.”

That hits me. Because I think Sam is correct. I also don’t think he is just talking about Paul anymore.

“Maybe he just loved her,” I say. “So he really didn’t want to think about it… what he was up against.”

“Can’t really blame him for that,” he says. “Who wants to think about what they’re up against?”

No one, I want to say. No one wants to think about what we’re up against. And with love, with standing up and trying to love anyone, we are up against ourselves too. We are up against our heartbreak and our pasts and our ideas about how things should be. We are up against our most primal pain, like a living-breathing barricade, blocking the space between where we’ve gotten stuck and where we most want to go.

Sam gets quiet again, looks out at the river. I know him well enough now to know what’s living for him somewhere in the silence—that beneath our shared grief, he knows what he is up against—how brave he is going to need to be before he gets to where he wants to go. As if what’s next is going to be one thing and not a multitude—a multitude that will only reveal itself on the other side of what he’s about to give up. His position at the company, his engagement, the dream of steady ground. It’s all unsteady, from here on out. Accepting that, just maybe, can bring on its own blessing. For him. And for me.

Loyalty doesn’t trump love. That’s how Paul said it, isn’t it? But what a thing, what a rare and precious thing if you have both. Loyalty and love, swirling together. What have I been doing? Except trying to escape what you can’t escape. Because when you do have both, you have everything to lose. And, eventually you will lose it. You will be separated. That is the cost of loving anyone. It doesn’t mean you don’t do it. You do it anyway. And you pray.

“I’m not moving to Brooklyn, am I?” Sam asks.

I shake my head. “No. Never.”

“Never seems a little dramatic, but I take the point.”

I smile at him. His face is too much like my father’s to be easy for me, at least yet. But I take him in anyway because I can already feel the ways I can help him to get there—to a place that’s better.

It’s selfish, really. Because in this moment, in this newfound hope, my own grief starts to lift.

Sam keeps his eyes on Manhattan while it’s still in front of him. I move closer to him.

“We did the right thing tonight?” he asks.

It’s a question and it’s not. But I put my head on my brother’s shoulder, like that’s something we do. Which is when it occurs to me that maybe it is now.

“We did the only thing,” I say.

This is how we agree that it’s time to go home.

One Year Ago

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

Cory looked over at him. They were standing on the curb in front of his childhood home, near the mailbox. They were supposed to be on their way to their high school for Liam’s fiftieth reunion. Liam had wanted to stop here on the way. He had wanted to ask the new family to let them in for a beat, so he could take Cory inside and check out his childhood bedroom. The closet. Cory & Liam. He wanted to see if it was still there. The doorway where he first met her. He wanted to stand beneath it. He wanted to hold her hand.

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Cory said. “Do you want to ditch the house visit? Or the reunion?”

Liam was looking through the small living room windows at the family inside. A family with young children, watching cartoons. He didn’t know them at all. This wasn’t even the family who had bought the house from Liam’s parents. This was the family after that family. He hadn’t been inside since this home had become theirs.

“Both. Neither. Yes.”

Cory bit back a smile. “You do know you’re the one who suggested this misbegotten adventure?”

“I do know that, yes.”

“And what did I tell you when you suggested it.”

“That I’d want to call it off.”

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