Page 158 of Sweet Dominion

There was something in the way his shoulders slightly slumped, the way he seemed to be taking in the details not with the awe of someone impressed by wealth, but with the detached observation of someone who had long ago stopped expecting much from the world.

As I watched him, I couldn’t help but remember the old days.

Einstein’s real name was Jerimiah, but no one had ever called him that.

And behind his bookish exterior was a childhood marked by loss and neglect—one that had probably shaped him into the reserved person he was today.

His older brother, Daniel, had been everything to their parents.

Daniel was the golden child, a natural athlete with a promising future ahead of him. He was the star of the neighborhood, a high school baseball prodigy who could have gone on to play professionally.

Meanwhile, Einstein had showed up as a surprise baby, completely unplanned.

Either way, everyone in the South knew his brother Daniel. He was the kid who had it all—the talent, the charm, the smile that could light up a room.

Einstein—on the other hand, was the quiet one—the one who was always in Daniel’s shadow.

But then, when Daniel was just fourteen, everything changed.

There was an accident—a freak accident, really. Daniel had been riding his bike home from baseball practice when a car came out of nowhere, swerving onto the sidewalk. Apparently, the female driver had been on the phone arguing with someone and wasn’t looking at the road.

The impact was fatal.

Daniel—the golden child—was gone in an instant.

Einstein was only ten at the time—too young to fully understand the magnitude of the loss but old enough to feel its impact.

His parents were shattered, but instead of turning to Einstein for comfort, or even acknowledging his own grief, they withdrew into themselves, consumed by the loss of their firstborn.

Aunt Betty used to say that maybe his mother was scared to love him after losing a child. Maybe she was trying to protect herself from the possibility of more grief.

Regardless of the reason, Einstein’s parents became shadows of their former selves.

Banks told me once that every time he spent the night, he caught Einstein’s mother just sitting for hours in Daniel’s room, while his father spent most of his time at work, coming home to drink and retreat into his own world of despair.

Basically, Einstein became even more invisible to his parents.

No one noticed when he didn’t eat breakfast or dinner.

No one cared when he stopped trying to bring home good grades, or when he began spending all his time in the school library, never going to class. His teachers found it difficult to even get his parents on the phone.

At too young of an age, Einstein had learned to fend for himself, to rely on no one. He was independent, self-sufficient, but many times he was utterly alone.

Books became his escape, his refuge from a world that had forgotten about him. He read anything he could get his hands on—novels, science journals, encyclopedias.

Often, we shared books during the summer and chatted about them.

When my mom passed, he was there. Not in my apartment, but in his car sitting outside of it and reading a book. He must have did that for months, just made himself available to my sisters and me without loudly declaring it.

I returned my focus to the current moment and watched him some more.

Einstein kept a stern expression and turned to me. “How long are you going to stare at me without saying anything?”

“Probably just as long as you were going to stare at that door without saying anything.”

He smirked. “You know that I can usually blend in the shadows with many people, but not you.”

“You’re hard for me to ignore.”

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