I opt to not see Dom’s body in the casket. Ironic, considering I’m obsessed with graves. Maybe I’m a fraud. Maybe that’s why Dom and I got along so well. After all, he turned out to be a fraud too. Although, weirdly enough, I barely think about his betrayal and focus more on his loss.

As we sit and listen to the sermon from the front pew of a Dover church, I hold Dad’s hand for dear life. Renn shoves his shoulder against mine lovingly.

I don’t allow myself to ask Dad if he is mad at me, or what it was that he wanted to tell me all those months ago. I don’t broach the subject of how our relationship is going to look after this is all over. I also don’t dare ask Nora what Dom looked like when she worked on him. I find myself incapable of making conversation with anyone. Everything feels swollen and raw. Things that bothered me—Dom’s hectic schedule, Lynne and Babe and his awful—awful—taste in music—now seem so small and insignificant. I would pay in weeks and months and years from my own life just to be able to kiss and touch him again. To tell him that I love him. To explain that I really didn’t need the tampons.

I didn’t. Need. The. Tampons.

I marvel at the cruelness of the world. How it let Dom survive cancer but ended up taking his life prematurely anyway. And I wonder how many losses one person can experience before they give up on the idea of happiness. I don’t know where I land on the loss-meter. Happiness seems like a mythical thing right now.

After the ceremony, people peer inside the casket. I slip out of church and pass by Sarah and Gemma and Brad, who are standing by the door like one family unit. I try to muster the strength to feel jealous, but I’m so mentally exhausted I can’t even do that.

As I round the churchyard, I notice Joe by a duck-filled pond, leaning against a tree trunk, smoking. The sun dances around him like a halo, and my heart squeezes despite myself at how beautiful he is. He looks tired too. It suddenly dawns on me. Why he is smoking. It’s not to look cool or to live the tortured-writer way. It is because he feels guilty—has always felt guilty—that he is the healthy one. The cancer-less brother.

I approach him, wobbling a little on my fancy shoes.

“Can I bum one?” I ask when I get to him.

He doesn’t make a big stink about it and offers me his soft pack, even though he knows I don’t smoke. I pluck one cigarette out and clasp it between my lips. He lights it up for me and tucks the lighter back into his front pocket.