Chapter 5

Sarah left for her sister's a little after seven, the same drive she made twice a month, always at night, always the same road. "Don't wait up," she said at the door, kissing me quickly. "I'll probably be late."

"Drive safe," I said, the same thing I always said, and went back to unpacking a box of books in a room that smelled so much of Luke.

Luke was in the kitchen when she left, close enough to have heard every word of it, though he didn't look up from whatever he was doing at the counter. I remember that now, the specific stillness of his back, the way he didn't call out a goodbye the way he usually did whenever any of us left the house. At the time I didn't think anything of it. I was thinking about bookshelves.

By nine I'd stopped pretending to read and started checking my phone instead. No new messages. That wasn't unusual, her sister's place had bad signal, and they always lost track of time over wine and the kids' bedtime chaos. I told myself that. I believed it for a while.

By ten I'd sent two texts. Everything okay? Losing track of time? Nothing came back. I stood at the window in the dark, the way I used to catch Luke doing when we were kids, and told myself I was being ridiculous, that a woman a half hour late from her sister's wasn't a crisis, that my body didn't need to feel the way it was starting to feel.

At ten forty, my phone rang. Not Sarah's name on the screen. Luke's.

"Hey," I said, already frowning, already reaching for my jacket before I understood why. "You never call this late, is everything—"

"Mike." His voice was wrong. Flat in a way I'd never heard from him, not once in twenty years. "You need to come to the hospital. Now."

The floor of the world tilted an inch. "What happened? Is it you, are you—"

"It's not me." A pause, half a second too measured. "Just come. I'll meet you there."

He hung up before I could ask which hospital. I stood in the hallway with the dead phone in my hand for a full three seconds before some animal part of my brain took over and got me into the car.

I don't remember most of the drive. I remember running red lights I would never normally run. I remember praying to a god I hadn't spoken to since I was a kid, bargaining with him in a language that made no sense even as I used it. I remember pulling into the first hospital I thought of, on nothing but instinct, and finding Luke already there, already at the front desk, already leaning in close to a nurse, speaking too quietly for me to hear.

He turned when the doors slid open behind me. For half a second, before his face rearranged itself into grief, I caught something else in it. Something closer to readiness than shock.

"Luke." My voice cracked on the single syllable. "How did you know which hospital—"

"I called around," he said, already crossing the waiting room toward me, already reaching for my arm. "I didn't want you wasting time at the wrong one."

I didn't have room at that moment, to ask how he'd known to call around at all before anyone had told him there'd been an accident. The doctor came through the double doors before I could form the question, and one look at his face erased every other thought in my head.

"I'm so sorry," the doctor said. "The impact was severe. We did everything we could."

The waiting room noise, phones, a vending machine humming, someone's TV bolted to the ceiling, all of it went underwater at once. My knees actually buckled, the floor rushing up sideways, and it was Luke's arms that caught me, hauling my full weight against his chest before I hit the tile.

"I've got you," he said into my hair, and I felt the words vibrate through his ribs more than I heard them. "I'm not going anywhere."

"H-how are you so calm... she's gone" I cried into his shirt, not a real question, barely even a word, my whole body shaking apart in his arms.

"I am," he said, low, steady, like a man reciting something he'd rehearsed. "You don't get to be right now. That's mine to carry for both of us tonight."

A nurse approached a few minutes later, asking gently if there was anyone else she should call. Parents. Family. Luke answered before I could open my mouth.

"I'm his brother," he said. "I'll handle everything from here."

I let him. I let him say it, let him mean it, let him fold his hand around the back of my neck and steer me toward a chair like I was something that might shatter if he let go. And it wasn't until much later, lying awake in the dark of a house I already couldn't leave, that I let myself go back to that one half-second in the waiting room, the look on his face before it became grief, and ask myself what, exactly, I'd seen there instead.