“Tell her I’ll love her from wherever I end up, and that I’m going to miss her Sunday omelets every single week even though they were burnt to hell.” He tries to laugh.
I try too because Karina’s omelets deserve their own chapter in a medical textbook on gastritis.
His eyes lose focus, and I start shaking him.
“Dean... Dean, open your eyes. Open your eyes, damn it. Don’t leave me too.”
I don’t know how long I hold him. I don’t know how many seconds pass, I don’t know how long before his body starts losing its warmth, but I know when I hear voices around me.
I watch through a daze as the paramedics lift his lifeless body and call it. Time of death: 2:14 a.m.
I’m taken to a police precinct, but I know exactly what to say.
I tracked his GPS when he didn’t come home, and that’s how I found this address. I don’t know what my brother was involved in. I don’t know who shot him. I found him already injured on the concrete floor of that warehouse.
Four lies and one truth. I will not stop looking for the man who decided to end my brother’s life rather than pay us $7,600 to clean some money.
I don’t know how I’ll find him yet, but I have a name.
Rastovski.
Coming back here always doesthis to me. The memory of that night floods in the moment I arrive, like the air itself is forcing me to relive it on a loop.
I hear his laugh before I see him, and for five full seconds I have to stop and force myself not to turn around and leave.
They need you, Silas.
Dean’s voice is always loudest when I come back to where we grew up. Pennsylvania was home for eighteen years, and even though I’ve been to places a thousand times more beautiful, there’s something in the air here. A comfort. A familiarity. A nostalgia.
Allentown has a population of roughly 125,000 people and covers eighteen square miles. It sits at an elevation of 338 feet, and it’s where the most important people in my life live.
Karina appears in the doorway with that look that tells me she’s missed me and wishes I’d come back for good.
Her arms open automatically, and without meaning to, I’m hit with the scent of roses and vanilla. Her hair tickles my cheek, and I allow myself exactly eighteen seconds of that feeling of home.
She has dark circles under her eyes. I make a note to find out why later, though I have a strong suspicion because the most likely cause comes launching himself around the corner at full speed.
“Hey, buddy. You driving your mom crazy again?”
Sebastian’s smile could split his face in two, and I feel a small, familiar ache somewhere behind my ribs. He is nineyears old and physically unable to occupy a room without also somehow occupying every corner of it simultaneously.
And God help us all when he turns that energy into stubbornness.
“Silas, are you staying the night?” he asks, and a knot forms in my throat because I don’t come here often enough. Because he needs a father, and all I can offer is a temporary stand-in.
“This time, yeah. Come show me what you’ve done with the Lego set I left you last time.”
I watch him take off down the hallway at a sprint, while Karina steps up behind me and whispers, “We miss you, Silas.”
I rest my hand lightly over my chest because, no matter how far I go, this place brings every mistake I’ve ever made back to the surface, and every promise I still haven’t kept.
I spend the entire afternoon with Sebastian, who is absolutely determined to walk me through how the motor he attached to his latest little robot works, and without meaning to, some of the weight I always carry lifts a little. Because his eyes,my eyes, light up when he talks about how long it took him to put the pieces together and how none of his classmates could have done it.
Karina sits on the couch and watches us with the same warm expression she has every time I visit.
When I manage to pull myself away for a few minutes, I find her holding out a mug of green tea.
“How are the classes going? Have you settled in okay?”
