“But even now, our dad probably wouldn’t have understood. And you know what? Lawrence would never have held that against him. ’Cause he knew our father was such a good man, with a good heart. It wouldn’t have been in our father to understand something like that. Lawrence would have accepted that, wouldn’t even have bothered his father with it. Lawrence doesn’t need anybody’s acceptance. He’s who he is.”

“I know,” I said.

She shook her head again, then appeared thoughtful for a moment, like she was trying to remember something. “Mr. Walker, what did you say your first name was?”

“Zack.”

“Oh my.”

“What?” I said.

“Lawrence, he’s been kind of in and out, you know. They’ve got him on painkillers. But he’s been asking for you. He’s been saying your name.”

“Asking for me?”

“He keeps saying ‘Zack.’ And things that don’t make sense.”

“Like what?”

“You should see him. You should come in.”

“I don’t think they’re going to believe I’m family,” I said.

She smiled at that, and it was a beautiful smile. Letitia glanced over at the nurses’ station, didn’t see anyone looking our way, and led me through the door into the ICU.

We slipped quietly past the other patients, who were in varying stages of disrepair, and when we got to the far side of the room, I could see around the curtain.

He looked bad.

There were tubes running in and out of him, monitors beside and above him, and I didn’t understand what any of it meant. But you didn’t have that much hardware hooked up to you unless it was pretty damn serious.

“Hey, man,” I said.

His eyes were closed, his head back on the pillow. Letitia moved in close to him. “Larry,” she whispered. “He’s here. The man you were asking for. Zack. Zack is here.”

One eye half fluttered open, went closed again.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We should just let him rest.”

“No,” Letitia said to me. “It sounded important, what he wanted to tell you.”

Now I leaned in a bit closer. “Lawrence, it’s Zack. Your sister says you wanted to give me some sort of a message. So, like, I’m here. But you take your time.”

The one eye fluttered open again, landed on me, tried to focus. Now the other eye struggled to open.

“Ohhhhh,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, you must be hurtin’,” I said.

He grimaced, rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. “Zack,” he said, barely more than a whisper.

“Yeah, I’m here. You kind of made a mess of my feature, you know? Getting yourself hurt this way, it kind of changed the angle. You shouldn’t have gone and done that on me.”

“Watch,” he said.

“Huh? What did you say, Lawrence?”

“He said ‘watch,’ ” Letitia said.