“It isn’t fair!” she said. “It isn’t fair!”
“Just take a deep breath, all right? Turn off the TV. It’s all right. It’s—”
She blew her nose: a honk. The echo of the announcer and his color commentator, muffled but loud enough to set the scene. My mother, holed up in that extra bedroom. All those trophies and medals and news clippings. My brother, frozen at ten, at twelve, at fourteen. There was Stephen Strasburg, and there was Gerrit Cole, and there was Mark Appel, and then there was going to be my big brother, Mikey Caruso. At sixteen, he could throw a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball in his sleep. He was built like a lumberjack—like, according to aSports Illustratedarticle published a month before the accident, a Greek god. His shoulders, so broad he could barely fit through a doorframe. He’d been born to do this—to throw a slider, a cutter, a curveball.
“Every time another one of his teammates makes it,” she said, “it’s a whole new death to me. They’re all twenty-six, twenty-seven now. I thought we were done. It’s just too much. It’s too much.”
“I know, Mom. But you can’t do this to yourself anymore. You can’t—”
“What else am I supposed to do? He was my baby! He was going to be the best to ever do it! He—”
“Mom! Do you even know where I am right now? Do you even remember what I do for a living? That I have an actual job?”
“Of course I do! I’m grieving! I—”
“Grieving!?” I said. Tyler had walked toward me. His arms were crossed around his body, and his head was bowed. I recognized the hunch of his shoulders and the strain in his eyes from thenight he came back to my window. From the night he realized what was really happening inside my home. “It’s been eight years! Stop fucking grieving!”
“That’s not fair, Katie! You know that’s not fair!”
“Not fair!?” I was spinning in circles. The sky was smothering. Sweltering. There was no air left for me to breathe. “None of this has ever been fair! What about me? I’m right here! When’s it going to be my turn for you to give a shit about me?”
“He was my son! A piece of me is gone, and you expect me to carry on? You expect me not to spend the rest of my life fighting for what I lost? You expect me to put up Christmas lights and go on a cruise and pretend it never happened? How could I do that? How could I ever let him go? You could never understand—you’re not a mother. But he was my little boy. My Michael, my...”
Tyler was grimacing. His eyes were shut, and he was rocking back and forth, fists closed and jaw clamped. I took a deep breath, and then I did something I had never, ever done.
I hung up the phone.
I heard my mother in pain, and I did not care.
I sat on the marble floor of Tyler’s shower, my heaving and hitching body wedged between his bare knees. His hands were wrapped around my stomach, wrapped around me. His mouth, pressed against the base of my neck as falling water ricocheted off our shoulders.
“Will you come with me?” I said. “Saturday?”
“Wh-where?” Tyler replied. I could not see him. I could only hearhis voice, soft and low on my skin. I fell deeper into him, into his arms. My spine, glued to his chest. His heartbeat, fast, but his hold on me, tight.
I exhaled. “My mom, she started this charity... I know I’ve hardly mentioned it, but it’s this substance abuse thing for athletes. I guess they’re predisposed after an injury or when their careers end. It’s actually a really amazing program. She’s gotten a lot of legislation passed, a lot of funding and grants to help with education and treatment. That Narcan-in-every-dorm-room bill that’s about to go through—that was all her. And I know I should’ve told you sooner. That you, of all people, would’ve understood. But I guess there’s this big part of me that’s ashamed because it’s so obvious that helping her with this stuff is the only way I can get her to pay attention to me. And I didn’t want you to see that side of me.”
He pushed his nose into my shoulder. “You don’t ever have to feel ashamed with me, Katie. But I know all about it, okay? I always have.”
I craned my neck to face him. “You do?”
He twisted me around completely and pulled me into his lap. “Those first few years after Mikey died... I looked you up all the time. Your mom, your dad, your cousins, anyone I could find. When I was in college, I knew you were in school in New York. I wanted to come find you. I thought about it constantly. I even bought train tickets a couple of times. But I couldn’t do it. I was too afraid. And then, when I got to the city, I stopped looking. I knew you must’ve been close, and that made it so big and so real. I told myself you were okay. That by then, you must’ve been okay. I was terrified to run into you. I knew that when I did, it’d be too late to say I was sorry or try and make things right.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I was waiting for you. That night, after the funeral. That whole year we moved, even the summer after. I thought you’d come back for me. I thought you’d at least come and say goodbye.”
“I know,” he said. “Trust me, I know.”
“Why didn’t you? I needed you. Where were you?”
Tyler closed his eyes. Something coursed through him, traveling from his face to his torso to the tips of his fingers, which were still wrapped around me but suddenly distant. Suddenly not the same.
“Tyler,” I said. “Why didn’t you show up that night? Why didn’t you even say goodbye?”
He looked at me. His irises, piercing. Water, clinging to his skin. He pressed his palms to his mouth and blew out a breath.
“I didn’t—I can’t...”
“I need to know. Please.”
