Caesar and I deplane at Concourse E with our carry-ons and move like cattle through the corridor to pack into the train, which lurches along and finally releases us into the main terminal. Caesar hates parking at the airport, so the plan was to get a taxi and drop Caesar off at his place before I went on to Ethan’s house in the suburbs. Of course, that was before Uncle Gavin decided to swoop in and surprise us.

“I didn’t tell him, Suzie,” Caesar says.

“I know,” I say, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I believe you. It’s fine. You’re probably right and he’s not here because of me. We’ll see him and then I’ll go to Ethan’s.”

“You’re doing that thing with your hair again.”

“What thing?”

“Pushing it behind your ear. You do that when you’re nervous.”

“Bitch, please. First of all, you don’t even have any hair—”

Caesar stops in the middle of the flow of people streaming past baggage claim. An elderly woman stops just short of colliding with Caesar and gives him the evil eye. I smile back at her, showing all my teeth, and she scurries on. Caesar pays no attention, his eyes fixed on a small crowd on the other side of the belt barriers separating us from baggage claim. “Dude, what—” I say.

He grips my upper arm, gently but with intention, and I follow his gaze. Two cops are backing people up from a knot of EMTs huddled around someone they have just lifted onto a stretcher. Something dark and oval-shaped lies on the tile floor beside the stretcher. A tweed flat cap. The same kind of hat my uncle wears. I register this at the same time that I realize the man on the stretcher, an oxygen mask clamped to his face, is Uncle Gavin.

I pass through the crowd like a fish through water, arrowing toward my uncle. A cop steps in my path, palms up. “Please, ma’am, keep back.”

“But—” I gesture at the stretcher. My face crumples into a precursor to an ugly cry. “That’s my uncle. I need to see, please.”

The cop hesitates, then steps back so I can pass. I grab Caesar by the hand. “Come on, honey.” I drag him past the cop before either of them can say anything.

Up close, Uncle Gavin doesn’t look good. His face is gray as cement, his eyes closed. One of the EMTs is saying something about his blood pressure dropping. I stand there, staring at my uncle, unable to move because I’m ten years old and sitting on the floor of my house, blood on my hands and in my lap, staring at my father who is bleeding out on the living room floor, my mother dead on the couch, my brother shot like I am and screaming for Dad.