Otter’s watching me, waiting for me to start. I know he’s going to follow my lead, and I appreciate the hell out of him for that. I’m angry, and rightly so, but I don’t want to open my mouth until I can be sure I won’t say anything I can’t take back. I may still talk too much, and ninety-five percent of what comes out of my mouth is still bullshit, but I’m not that same person I was the days when we lived in that shitty apartment with the splintered steps. When I’d worked at the grocery store, worrying about how we were going to pay rent or if the piece of crap car I’d had would start or if I would open the door one day and she’d be standing there, saying that she was sorry and she was ready to come back and could I get her a couple of fingers of Jack? Two ice cubes, because that’s how she liked it. And were there any smokes left? They’d probably be stale, but she’d still smoke them. It’d be fine.

And you worried, it whispers. Didn’t you? You worried that you’d fuck him up more than he already was. Because even back then, even before she left, you knew he wasn’t normal. And what were you going to do about it? Oh, that’s right! You were going to leave him with her. Do you remember that, Bear? You had plans. You were going to go off to college with your bright eyes and your big dreams, and you were going to leave him behind. Would you have felt bad about it? Maybe. But that relief you would have felt would have eclipsed it. Right? And when you’d come back to visit, you’d feel bad, you really, really would, but then you’d remember that you got to leave again, and you’d feel better. How different things could have been!

I couldn’t do this here. The room felt too warm, the murmur of the voices in the kitchen too loud.

“Bear?” Otter asks, and he sounds a little worried.

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Let’s go out back.”

He nods and reaches out to take my hand. I squeeze it gratefully, letting it ground me. It’s familiar, this, and I take it for all that it is.

There’s a sliding door out the living room that leads to a side yard that wraps around to the back. There used to be a chain-link fence that surrounded the house, a cheap thing that shook and rattled when it was windy. Otter had gotten rid of it a long time ago, replacing it with a six-foot-tall wooden fence. Our neighbors had tried to give us shit, but Otter had glared at them, crossing his arms over his chest. They hadn’t said much after that.