I pause on the next big junction and glance down either side of the intersection. Maybe I should go to a police station, maybe that’s what I should do…

A car pulls up behind me and I spin around as Oliver gets out.

“Gillie.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “I told your mom, she’s waiting in reception for him. He’s bound to go back there, you know.”

“Yeah.” I breathe. “Yeah, I guess so…”

“Come on,” Oliver says. “Get in the car. We’ll go around the block. We’ll keep looking for him.”

He guides me into the cab and the driver greets me with sympathetic confusion.

“Around?” he motions. “Just…around?”

“Yes,” Oliver says.

At the top of the street we turn right, then climb a few more blocks. Suddenly on 15th Ave and 8th, I put my hand on Oliver’s elbow.

“Wait, let me out here for a minute.”

We’re at Domino Park.

The driver glances in the rearview, pulls over.

I see Oliver push some bills on him, asking him to wait.

I dash through the arch, taking in the chatter, the groups of men leaning over their games. And then over in the corner on a wooden bench under a mural, a smaller figure with blond, matted hair. He’s not surprised to see me.

“Sam.”

He looks at me as I stand in front of the bench. Not surprised and not repentant. Now that we’ve found him I can feel some of the adrenalin go still inside me, all too ready to tip towards anger. Instead I sit.

“You ran off,” I say. “You can’t just do that—you know that, right?”

Sam looks away, jaw out.

“Sam?” I say.

I wait.

“You lied,” he says. “And it isn’t fair.”

I sigh.

“No,” I agree. “This isn’t fair. Life often isn’t.”

He turns then, and glares at me.

“You know, no one ever even talks about Grandad dying. They act like he just was living and then stopped living, as if the dying part didn’t even happen. But it did! And he was alone.”

I swallow.

“Well… he was and he wasn’t, Sam. I think we were with him, you know. Even though we weren’t there physically.”

Sam’s glare deepens.

“Don’t say stupid stuff like that to me. You know it’s just words.”

Are they just words? It’s a scene I’ve pictured too, more than I’ll admit. Dad in the car, pulling over: his eyes darting to the passenger seat from habit, as though Mom’s there beside him. The rearview mirror, as though his girls are in the back, like when we were kids we always used to be.