Silas felt his words like a sharp, sudden blade to an artery. A pang of cold steel, followed by a sensation of draining that promised to be the gray side of pleasant, should he only give in to it.

“I asked you a fucking question,” Gavin said, aiming the gun at Silas’s skull.

“Jesus.” Silas exhaled, never having predicted that he would be a last-minute believer. He tried to listen for Sean in the woods but didn’t hear anything human. “There is nothing I can say right now that could make what happened to Sarah all right—”

“I didn’t ask you to make it right. I asked you if this was where it happened.”

Silas nodded. “Yes,” he said, forcing himself not to whisper. “And like I said, I’ll do whatever you want. Let’s just get these kids out of here. Okay?”

Gavin was quiet for a moment, loosening a rock from the firepit with his toe and rolling it beneath his shoe. Then he tilted his head up to the sky and took in a long, deep breath.

“We’re not there yet. First, I have something for you. Something I’ve been holding on to for a very long time.”

Gavin let the gun drop to his side as he dug into his pockets, and eventually he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Silas squared his shoulders and took the remaining steps to Gavin’s outstretched hand, the loosened rock inches from his foot.

“I got it in the mail a few days after the verdict. Thought it was about time you saw it too.”

When Silas saw the handwriting on the piece of paper, everything else went very, very still.

For Silas, one of the hardest things about loss was knowing that he already had every piece of his brother he would ever get. All the words he had ever written, all the tools he had ever cleaned after working on his bike. Everything Philip touched Silas had since touched so many times that, by now, all that was left was Silas himself.

So at first, he couldn’t even take in the words on the paper; he was just so elated to have something of his brother’s that was new, something yet to be tarnished by the hungry eyes of a scavenger, remembering.

But then he started to read.

PHILIP