Part of me is still angry with him. For siding with Tom and not being there when I needed him. For all the months, evenyears, where he’s been so absent, leaving me alone in this house to deal with everything by myself.
…but he’s my brother.
He’s the last main family member I have left. All we’ve got is each other now. It’s like losing our parents all over again... except worse this time. Because at least back then, we had Uncle Eddie to hold us together.
Now there’s no one but us.
I pad into the room and sit down on the bed beside him.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “Not much. You?”
Moses shrugs, his gaze dropping back to the photo album. “Was looking at Unc’s things. Trying to figure out how I’m gonna sort through it all. Then I found these.”
He angles the album so I can see the page he’s on.
An automatic smile tugs at the corners of my mouth, nostalgia fluttering through me.
It’s a photo from a summer I’d almost forgotten. I’m maybe seven or eight, perched on a shimmery pink bike with ribbons streaming from the handlebars, grinning at the camera with my two front teeth missing. Moses is off to the side, drowning in an oversized basketball jersey, a ball tucked under his arm. Our Dad and Uncle Eddie hover in the background, both of them laughing at something just out of frame.
“You remember that afternoon?” Moses asks.
The smile finishes spreading on my face. “That was right before the ice cream truck came through. I raced you on my bike and beat you to it.”
Moses chuckles slightly. “Lana, I let you win.”
I glance at him, softening at the confession. “I know… but I always appreciated that you did.”
We fall silent again, both of us staring at the photo and thinking about how bittersweet it is to remember times like the one pictured.
Moses sighs, heavy and tired, still looking down at the photos. “I’m sorry, Lana. I know I haven’t been around. I’ve missed a lot. I’ve been... avoiding being home. Maybe ’cuz it was easier being gone.”
The smile fades from my face, dipping into a frown. “But why?”
“Ever since Pop died, things’ve been different. I come home and I just... remember. All the good times. All the shit we used to do together. But I didn’t think about how being gone so much affected you. Never thought about how you felt, being left alone all the time.”
My throat tightens as I can’t even refute what he’s said—itwasextremely rough being left alone to grieve. It made me sad and lonely, desperate to be accepted and seen by someone.
Anyone.
“I should’ve noticed you were with Silver before what happened at the barbecue,” Moses says. He finally looks at me, pain etched in his eyes. “How did it even start? You and him?”
I hesitate, debating how much to tell him. How much he can even handle and that I’m ready to share.
“Um… Silver was there for me,” I say slowly, “when no one else was. I was in a situation where… um, somebody hurt me. Really badly. And Silver was the only one who noticed. He helped me through it.”
Moses goes still, his expression clenching into anger. “Who? Hurt you how? Lana, what happened?”
I release a quivery breath and shake my head. “I’d rather not go into details. But Silver was there for me, and he helped me through it all. We handled it. I’m slowly trying to heal.”
“Fuck, Lana...” Moses groans, dragging a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been there. I should’ve noticed.”
“There’s no changing the past. It is what it is, Moses.”
“I wanna fix this,” he says after a few seconds. “Fix our relationship. If you’ll let me.”
I study my big brother who used to let me win races and steal his Halloween candy and check under my bed for me when I was convinced there was a monster hiding under it. We’ve been strangers for so many years since.
But maybe we don’t have to stay that way.
