I’m going to spend a long time making that right.”

And the coal of anger I had been carrying in the separate room in my chest — the one I was so ashamed of — did not vanish all at once, because things like that don’t.

But it cooled.

Sitting in that truck, hearing my brother name the exact thing I had needed him to name, I felt it begin to go cold and quiet and harmless.

“You’re here now,” I said, which was all I could manage.