It became routine—our quiet companionship. Walking through the grocery store when Dad took us along, me arguing over which cereal was best while Blake pushed the cart in silence. Sitting under the oak tree in the backyard, me flipping through Mom’s magazines, him reading whatever book Mom had given him that week. Sometimes, I’d fall asleep there, the sun warming my skin, and when I woke up, he’d still be beside me, turning pages like time didn’t exist.

Did he know he was a shadow long before I named him one? That he slipped between the cracks of my life like dusk slipping into night—slow, inevitable, unshakable?

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I wasn’t just chasing him in the daylight—I was trying to hold on to something that would eventually slip away, no matter how tightly I gripped.

Because like all shadows, he was destined to disappear.

It was just a matter of when.

3

BEVERLY, 1994

12 years old

Spring arrived early that year, the kind that gently melted away the lingering chill of February mornings.

I turned twelve that month, caught in that strange in-between of childhood and growing up. I still liked cartoons, but now I had strong opinions about pizza toppings.

But it wasn’t just me who was changing. Somewhere between the gray, short days of January and the first hints of spring, Blake began to change, too. It started with little shifts in his actions that no one mentioned but were impossible to ignore. He began sitting with us in the living room after lunch, no longer disappearing to his room the second his plate was empty.

He still kept mostly quiet, but he stayed, settling into the corner of the couch with a book in his lap while Mom and Dad talked about their day. Sometimes he’d even leave his books there, forgotten on the cushions, instead of carrying them back to his room. He even started responding when I talked to him, even if it was just a word or two.

He was there in a way he hadn’t been before.