“Adam, Adam, Adam.” Greg’s half-teasing voice started playing and Jeremy and I both froze. “Why do you even have a phone? So, listen, I’m bringing another dog home and I haven’t found a home for Baloo, so obviously Mom and Dad can’t know.”
Jeremy’s gaze lifted to mine, his mouth opened like he wanted to ask a question but didn’t want to risk talking over our brother’s voice.
“I need you to move Baloo to the other cage in the barn, the one with the blue dog bed. But watch his leg, because he’ll bite you if you pull his stitches. Maybe get Jeremy to help—”
Jeremy’s face twitched and he sat forward, his hand drifting toward but not touching the phone when Greg said his name.
Caught between the memory like I always was and the sight of Jeremy hearing Greg’s voice, I didn’t move as the rest of the message played. I didn’t even stop him when he replayed it.
“How do you have this?” he asked when it ended the second time, but what he really meant washow do you have this but you’ve never played it for me?
I took a slow step toward him, intending to pick up the phone and reassure myself that the voice mail was still safe and saved, but the second I moved, Jeremy looked up. His eyes were flooded, and he simultaneously looked like I’d given him the greatest gift of his life and tried to keep it from him all at once.
My stomach twisted. It wasn’t like I’d set out to keep it from him. After Greg died and I realized it was the last message he’d ever send me, I’d listened to it over and over again until it became a ritual. Whenever I thought about Jeremy and how he might want to hear it, I’d tell myself that he probably had a saved voice mail of his own.
But watching Jeremy replay Greg’s message for the third time, I saw instantly how wrong I’d been.
I sat down next to my brother, seeing the way his eyes swam as he got to hear our brother again. “Jer, I’m sorry.”
Jeremy nodded, not taking his eyes from the phone. The air I drew into my lungs turned thick and heavy, as though it fought every breath I took, not wanting to be inside me anymore than I did. And I didn’t know how to make it better.
“I should have played it for you from the start.”
He sniffed, then rubbed his eyes with the back of his arm, and nodded again. Or he started to nod but the gesture morphed into something more ambiguous. “We were better with him, the three of us, you know?”
I sucked my lips in, nodding when the pressure built behind my eyes and the words wouldn’t come.
“He knew what to say to you.” Jeremy turned to me, his eyes still wet. He slapped his palm with the back of the other hand to punctuate his next words. “Like, every time, he knew what to say to you. That’s not me. I don’t know how to talk to you. If it’d been me instead of him gone—” He choked on his own words and forced his eyes wide as he glanced away. “This wouldn’t have happened.” He made a gesture that encompassed not just Dad’s apartment and the fact that our family was living apart, but also me and him and the way our relationship had frayed over the past couple years. “He’d never have let it get like this, and I tried, but I’m not him. I don’t know how to be him with Mom or Dad. Or you.” He shook his head. “You think I don’t get that, that you’re the only one who’s smart enough to see how much better he was at everything, but I know.”
It was so wrong that I wanted to laugh, and the sound that came out of me was much harsher, more broken than a laugh. “And you think I know what to say to you? To any of you?” Jeremy wasn’t the only one who came up short. And it wasn’t that I thought I was so much smarter than him by realizing how far short we fell compared to Greg, it was that I hoped he didn’t feel it, too.
Because it felt like this gut-twisting emptiness. The grief was bad enough, but knowing that Greg had left behind a role that Jeremy and I were expected to fill for each other—one we couldn’t possibly take on—was sometimes worse in a way.
“I’ll never be as good as he was. I push, and I push, and even when I’m telling myself to stop—” I stabbed my fingers into my sternum “—I push harder. I make you mad, because I don’t know how to do anything else.” I sucked in as much of the thick air as I could, feeling my chest rise and hurt. Because everything hurt. All the time. “How did he do it, huh?” The words came out as a whisper, soft yet guttural. “Tell me, ’cause I can’t figure it out any more than you can.”
I was so close to losing that last bit of hold I had over myself. My eyes were welling up, and I knew the second I blinked, they’d spill over. And I still couldn’t breathe right. The air wouldn’t come, and then it’d come too fast, too much. “It’s not just you. I’m not him either.”
Jeremy considered me for a moment, staring hard, seeing everything, so much more than I’d ever given him credit for. Then he snorted. “I’m the older brother—the oldest brother now. I’m supposed to keep you in line and have your back. I’m supposed to be the one you can come talk to when stuff gets messed up.”
“And I’m supposed to talkyoudown, haveyourback. I’m supposed to be someone you can talk to, too.”
“Yeah.” Jeremy scoffed and he pulled off the near laugh far better than I had. “Except you’re an arrogant little punk most of the time.”
A sound came out of me, more a surprised exhale than anything, but the sound that followed on its heels lifted my mouth on one side. I glanced sideways at him. “And you’re a short-tempered idiot.”
He laughed. So did I. True laughter. Some of the tightness loosened in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not ever gonna be him, but I’ll try to be better than I’ve been.”
“Yeah?” He lifted an eyebrow. “’Cause you sucked a lot this past year.”
I made sure Jeremy saw me rotate my jaw in annoyance and he cracked a smile.
“I guess I have to. You’ve been a little better here lately. I don’t want you to think I don’t see that, but that crap last night?” He shook his head. “Greg would have torn you a new one, too.”
Remembering why last night had happened, my jaw stayed tight. “No, Greg would have gone with me to kick someone’s ass.”
Jeremy frowned. “Who, Dad?”
