Chapter 3 — My Brother

I called Lowell that night, after the kids were down, and it took me three tries to dial because I did not know how to say the thing out loud.

Lowell is two years older than me, and if I had adapted to the climate by becoming careful, he had adapted by leaving — he moved across the country the week he turned eighteen and had spent the years since keeping a continent between himself and that house.

We were close in the specific way of siblings who survived the same thing and never once discussed it.

It was the great unspoken agreement of our adult lives: we loved each other, we called on birthdays, and we did not open the box.

He had a son of his own now.