He nodded. “I guess so.” In a very soft voice he added, “But…Evie?”

“Yeah?”

“It was the last thing I said to them before…before it happened. I can’t ever change that.”

There was so much anguish in his voice that it made my heart ache.

“No,” I agreed. “You can’t change that. But if the accident hadn’t happened, you would have apologized, and they would have forgiven you, right? It would have been no big deal, just a random argument where you said something you regretted.”

“I guess.”

I stopped on the sidewalk and faced him. “So tell yourself that they did forgive you—they just didn’t have a chance to say it in person.”

He looked over my shoulder as he shrugged.

“Oren,” I said, getting right in his face to stare in his eyes again. “They loved you, they forgave you. They probably didn’t take you seriously at all. They knew you were upset.” After a long minute his face scrunched up. “It still hurts, Evie. It hurts so much.”

“I know,” I said, trying to keep it together for him. “It’ll probably always hurt, but maybe not as much? My dad says you never stop missing someone who’s died, but the pain gets less…” I struggled to remember how he’d described it. “Sharp? It probably doesn’t seem like it now. But it will get better.” I realized that I was also talking to myself. And that my dad was absolutely right.

He sighed. “But…”

“What?”

“Does it stop hurting because I have to start forgetting about them?” he asked, his lip quivering. “Because I don’t want to forget them.”

“No,” I said. “You will never forget them. But you will start to remember the good parts about them more than the bad.”

He swallowed. “I don’t think I can forget about the accident.”

“No,” I said. “Probably not. But maybe you’ll think about it less.”

After we walked for a few minutes without speaking, Oren said, “You know, Evie, you’re pretty smart about this stuff. You’ve learned a lot from your parents.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I have learned from them, but…”

He looked at me. “But what?”

Maybe it was time to tell him the truth about Sam.

“Evie?”

I sighed. “But I lost someone once. Not someone in my family like you did or anything. But I was friends with a kid at camp last summer. His name was Sam.”

“Wait,” Oren said. “I remember you mentioned him. I thought you got in a fight. You said there was drama.”

“Not fight drama,” I said. “Death drama.”

“Was he in an accident?” Oren asked softly.

I shook my head. “No, he got sick. One day I went to arts and crafts to meet him, but he was gone. He’d had to go to the hospital and then…” I shrugged.

“Oh, Evie,” Oren said. “That’s really sad. Did you go to the funeral?”

I shook my head. “No. He lived in a different city, and I didn’t find out until later. I…I made him a get-well card and sent it to his home. But…his mom wrote me a letter back to tell me that he’d gotten worse and then…” I took a deep breath. “You know.”