I kiss the top of her head. “Thank you for sharing that with me. Your brother sounds like he was a really special person.”

Hannah nods. “Yeah, he really was.” She falls silent again, and I don’t know where she went in her mind, but I don’t want to rush her. If and when she’s ready to share more about her brother and what she’s been through, I’ll be here to listen, but it has to be on her time and terms. I’m expecting her to let the conversation pass, but instead she frees herself from my grip and spins in the tub to face me, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“But that’s why I don’t get it,” she mumbles with her chin resting on one of her knees, not looking at me. I reach out to stroke her cheek with my thumb.

“Don’t get what?”

She slowly glances over at me and holds my gaze for a few moments like she’s trying to find the words, or like maybe she’s afraid to say them. The corners of her eyes start to well with tears. “Why he had to die but I didn’t. We were twins, and we shared so much of the same DNA. So why did he get cancer when I didn’t?”

Instinctively, I wrap my arms around her again and pull her head to my chest and cradle her there. I give her several kisses.

“I’m so sorry. Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t have the answers for,” I tell her, thinking of what my mom is going through and if I’ll be able to cope if I ever lose her. It’s not at all the same thing as losing a sibling, but I can still relate. “Survivor’s guilt is a real thing. It’s hard to deal with.”

Hannah falls silent again, letting me rock her against my body. A few beats pass before she looks up at me again and smiles. “Thank you for listening to me.”

“Always,” I tell her and lean in to kiss her.

Our lips have just touched when something crashes into the water, splashing and scaring the hell out of us both. I twist a bit in the tub to find a cat sitting on one of the edges and a small bottle of face wash bobbing in the water.

“Did you do this?” I ask the cat as I lift the bottle out of the water and carefully put it back on the lip of the tub. But as soon as I do, the cat swipes out with its paw and knocks it right back into the water. Laughing, I try again, but the cat isn’t giving up, as if we’re playing some sort of back-and-forth game.