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“I miss her so much,” I whisper and he nods.

“I wish I’d come home more these past few years.” His voice breaks and a tear falls down his cheek. “The last time I saw her was almost a year ago.”

Reaching across the table, I grab his hand. “You’re all I have left now, Theo. We have to promise to not let so much time pass.”

He nods. “I promise.”

We finish our coffee as he tells me about what’s going on in Charleston and after we rinse our mugs out in the sink, we walk over to the closet and stop in front of the closed door.

“If we don’t make it through this, just know that I love you,” I quip and glance over at Theo as he rolls his eyes.

“You’re so goddamn dramatic.”

I scoff, vividly remembering one time when we were younger when Theo was convinced a simple cold was going to kill him as I step forward and grip the door handle. “Whatever you say, kettle.”

“Are you calling me dramatic?” he asks but I ignore him, opening the door and wincing. When nothing happens, I peek open my eyes and sigh. I half expected everything to just come pouring out of it like in cartoons. “Yes, clearly, I’m the dramatic one.”

“Shut up,” I say with a laugh, shoving him backward and he grabs onto my arm, almost sending us both crashing to the floor.

“Be serious. We have work to do,” he scolds, his face serious but playfulness still in his tone. Smiling, I turn back to the closet and the pain of the last few days crashes down on me again. It’s weird the way you can forget sometimes. Even though it just happened, there are still moments when I smile or something makes me laugh before I remember that my mother is gone and the guilt descends on me for daring to enjoy even a single moment of my life right now.

Sighing, I nod. “All right, let’s do this.”

We start gently pulling boxes out of the closet and setting them in various places around the room. When we run out of room to move around, we each go to a separate box and start digging through them.

“Do you remember these?” I ask, holding up the child-sized boxing gloves from when Mom made us start training.

“Shit, yeah. You hated it and Mom would drag us to class everyday.”

I turn the gloves over in my hand, remembering the horrific fights Mom and I would have whenever it was time to go to class or practice.

“Oh, God, and then she bought that bag, set it up in the garage, and made me practice for hours a day.”

Theo laughs. “Yeah, but look how good of a boxer you are now.”

“I still hate it,” I pout. Out of all the things our mother made us train in, boxing will always be my least favorite.

“You’ll thank her when you get in a fight.”

Arching a brow, I meet his gaze. “When am I ever going to get in a fight, Theo? When am I going to need to be able to reload a gun in two seconds or less? And yeah, sure, I can hit a target at fifteen hundred yards but who cares? I know all this useless stuff that I’m never going to need because I’m not a goddamn super spy or assassin.”

“Come on, T. Some of that stuff she taught us is useful.”

Sighing, I sink onto the ottoman and nod. “Yeah, it’s useful and I guess, if it ever comes down to it, I’ll be glad to have those skills but can you really say we had a childhood? As soon as we stopped bouncing from place to place every couple months, she started in with all this training. And for what? We may never know why she felt the need to teach us these things.”

“I know,” he says with a nod. “I’m not defending her choices but they aren’t useless either. We both know how to defend ourselves better than most people should the need ever arise.”

I press my fingers into my forehead. “I just want answers, Theo. I want to know what all of this was for and I want to know what happened to her. There’s this nagging feeling, deep down in my gut, that her death wasn’t just some random accident but as soon as I go down that rabbit hole, I start thinking that I’m losing my mind. Accidents happen all the time but she seemed invincible and it feels like I’m never going to get any peace.”

“It hasn’t even been a week, sis. Just give it time.” He walks over and sits next to me on the ottoman, wrapping his arm around me as I lay my head on his shoulder.

“I think I’m losing my mind.”

He laughs, giving me a squeeze. “Naw, T. You’re just grieving.”

“How are you holding it together so well?” I ask, lifting my head off his shoulder to study him.

“Honestly, I have no idea. I’m probably just going to break one day out of the blue and shock the shit out of everyone, including myself.”