I don’t know anymore.” He went pale.

Romina appeared behind me.

“You should go, Fabian.

Someone will call you when it’s time.” He set the bear down on the step, very carefully, the way you set down something for a child, and walked back to his truck with his shoulders bowed.

I did not know yet that he was carrying a secret heavier than any of us, and that he had just been sent away from the one family he had spent fifteen years quietly trying to stay near.

I think about that afternoon on the porch differently now that I know what I know.