Jeff had been just the opposite. Money. All he wanted was money. He set up lemonade stands and mowed yards; he filled more savings-stamps books than anyone else in their elementary school. He sold his Halloween candy or whatever else he could take to school without getting caught (firecrackers and cherry bombs), though he often did. Frank hadn’t wanted to think about what that meant for Jeff’s high school years, though he suspected condoms or marijuana or perhaps black-market exams. Lil praised his entrepreneurial spirit, and Frank tried not to go there, knowing he would lose his temper and make matters worse. Even now, the differences between the two are extreme: Becca, in her sleek modern home and now-happy marriage, a popular divorce lawyer, and Jeff, financially very successful doing whatever it is he does with technology but never really sinking roots, and needing his sister’s legal advice way too many times. Lil said the new woman in his life is age-appropriate and very promising, but who knows; that’s what they say every time. Who knows.

Frank draws the little face out of habit and then stares at it.

He once dared to flip open one of Lil’s many notebooks, only to find dates and moods, as if she were charting the weather, page after page of her emotional forecast: Cold and blue, but that’s November—too many memories that come and pull up a chair and refuse to leave. He flipped quickly, because he could hear her in the hall closet and knew she would return any second. He flipped, thinking surely he would read his own name, surely his presence would fill her notebook. He found hopeful and grateful, but then there was also lonely, overwhelmed, and sad, emotions she expressed so rarely. She had doodled little things and then x-ed them out. X marks the spot. You are here. And x equals the unknown, what is missing, a mistake, as well as a kiss.

The little face was off to the side, shocked mouth a perfect o.

Next to the face he’s drawn, he writes the word—their word—and says how sorry he is to break his promise, that he’s impatient and ready, that he hopes Lil is right and there’s something beyond it all, but even if there isn’t, it’s better than just sitting around and waiting for the inevitable and feeling like a burden, fearing the disgrace and disgust that often comes with the slower route. I’m sorry.