I sat down beside her, and she didn’t say anything, just spread the red blanket over my legs too, and gave me a funny little pat on my knee. I guessed she felt terrible, but I wasn’t mad. Not really. I wasn’t really sure exactly how I felt. A little bit like I wanted a glass of water. A little bit like I might hiccup.

Finally I turned to her. “Go ahead,” I said. “You can ask. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Really?” she said. “Because it seemed very . . . private, that room. It seemed like a kind of secret.”

“It is, I guess,” I said, picking at the blanket on my lap. “I don’t know why, really. But it is . . . a kind of secret. Even though everyone knows. Can something be a secret if everyone in the whole world knows it? If you just don’t talk about it, ever?”

Jasper’s eyes were on me—huge and soft and full of questions. But it was okay. I could handle it. Though after a year of definitely not being able to handle it, I wasn’t sure why I could handle it today. Maybe because she hadn’t ever known him. Maybe because she was someone new. And maybe just because she was Jasper.

“You can ask me,” I said again softly. “I promise it’s okay.”

We were silent a minute longer before she opened her mouth. “What was his name?” she asked.

“Sam,” I said. Now there were tears in my eyes, but they felt warm and right. Good, even. I could handle this. “His name was Sam.”

Jasper blinked, and I could see that she had tears in her eyes too. I was grateful. They made it easier, somehow. Made my tears feel okay. I wiped at my eyes with the ugly orange cuff of my stupid footie pajamas. I was still dressed like a duck. Why was I still dressed like a duck?

“Sam,” she said. “Sam. It’s a nice name.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was a nice kid. I mean, he was a regular kid. So sometimes he wasn’t nice. Sometimes he made me crazy. I guess that’s what little brothers do. But mostly he was nice.”

“And he . . .”

“He . . . died,” I said softly. “Drowned. In a lake. It was . . .” I wanted to keep going, tell her more, but I just couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come. I opened my mouth and then closed it again. One heavy tear rolled down my cheek. “I . . .”

Suddenly, outside, with no warning at all, a huge crash of thunder exploded and rattled the windows. The living room dimmed, and through that dusky light, Jasper and I peered at each other, side by side on the sofa. The sounds of rain filled the room, a regular spatter on the pavement outside and the sharp plinks and pings of drops hitting the metal roof above the chimney.