“Otter will too. It’s not about just us. It’s about you, too. We’ve stuck together this long. What’s the rest of our lives?”

“You’re going to make a good dad, you know? I’m sorry if I didn’t say that. You know. Before.” That was eloquent.

He grins, obviously pleased. “Yeah? You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“Me and babies, huh?”

I grimace at the thought. “Brave new world. You’re going to be covered in so many different bodily fluids.”

“That’s… disgusting.”

“It’s being a father.”

“Maybe Otter can do the… sticky things. I can… make lunches or something. Apple slices and juice boxes. Maybe laundry.”

“You’re going to make a great soccer mom,” I tell him.

“Out your ass, Kid,” he says.

We laugh and listen to the wind. The birds. The waves and the grass. At least for a little while, it’s just me and him, me and my big brother. It’s like I’m a little guy again, sitting at his side, his hand in mine while I play with his fingers. It’s how it started, this life. Our life. For the longest time, it was only Bear and me. Against all odds. Against the world. He stopped the earthquakes because that’s what brothers do. He was my home. He will always be my home.

Of course, she was too.

“I miss her,” I say.

He knows who I mean. “I do too. Every day. She’d be proud of you, I think.”

“Maybe. I think she’d tell me it’s time to move my ass, though.”

“Yeah. That sounds like her.”

And it does. Our Mrs. Paquinn. How much like her it sounds. Sometimes I like to pretend I can hear her voice. To hear what she’d say to me. To hear her laugh again, not just for the first time or the last time, but for all time. I like that. Even if it’s just pretend.

“Otter’s probably pacing at the front door, huh?” I ask finally.

Bear chuckles. “Wearing a groove as we speak.”

“He’s pretty great, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess he’s all right.” But that smile on my brother’s face says it all.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask him.

And somehow I know what he’s going to say, because it’s just like that time in this very place so long ago that I found him here when he thought all was lost. He’d said the same thing to me.

“We go home, Kid,” he says. “They’re waiting for us.”

“All of them?”

“No,” he says. “Not all of them, but enough. For now.”

And it is. I say good-bye to Mrs. P, telling her I’ll be back soon, before I follow Bear up the sand dune to the car.

We don’t say much on the way home. We’ve said enough already.

As soon as we’re in the driveway of the Green Monstrosity, the door opens and Otter comes out and circles to my side of the car. He opens the door and says, “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” I say back.