Kitty was right. Brad had been on the fence about quitting school and running off to parts unknown. When Dad found out, he sent Myron to talk to his little brother. “You go,” Dad told him. “You apologize for what you said about her.” Myron argued, pointing out that Kitty was lying about the birth control pills and had a reputation and all the crap Myron now knew was not true. His father had seen through it, even then. “Do you want to push him away forever?” his father asked. “You go and apologize and you bring them both home.”

But when Myron arrived, Kitty, in her desperation to escape, made up the story about Myron hitting on her. Brad went crazy. Listening to his brother scream and rant, Myron realized that he’d been right about Kitty all along. His brother was an idiot for getting involved with her in the first place. Myron started arguing back, accusing Kitty of all kinds of treachery and then, he screamed the final words he would ever say to his brother:

“You’re going to believe this lying whore over your own brother?”

Brad took a swing. Myron ducked it and, enraged himself, threw a punch back. Even now, standing at Brad’s final resting place, Myron could still hear the sick, wet squelching sound as his brother’s nose collapsed under his knuckles.

Myron’s final image of his brother was Brad on the floor, looking up at him in shock, Kitty trying to stem the blood pouring from his nose.

When Myron got home, he couldn’t tell his father what he’d done. Even repeating Kitty’s awful lie might give it credence. So instead Myron lied to his father. “I apologized, but Brad wouldn’t listen. You should talk to him, Dad. He’ll listen to you.”

But his father shook his head. “If that was Brad’s attitude, maybe this is what’s meant to be. Maybe we need to let him go and find his way.”

So they did. And now they were all back together for the first time, at a graveyard three thousand miles from home.

After another silent minute had passed, Al Bolitar shook his head and said, “This should never be.” He stopped and looked up at the sky. “A father should never have to say the Kaddish for his son.”

With that, he started back down the path.

After putting Mom and Dad on a flight from LAX to Miami, Myron and Mickey boarded a plane for Newark Airport. They flew in silence. After landing, they grabbed Myron’s car from long-term parking and started up the Garden State Parkway. Neither spoke for the first twenty minutes of the drive. When Mickey saw them pass the Livingston exit, he finally said something.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”