“Maybe.” She twirled some of her hair around her finger. “It’s funny how I think differently now. The other day I found a long, gray hair stuck to a bar of soap when I was in the shower. My mom’s hair. I tried to pull it off but it had already come loose and before I knew it, it slipped down the drain. I felt like, if I could have just held on to that hair I could, like, get her back. It’s stupid, the stuff I think. Like if I use up the roll of toilet paper they started, or finish the olive oil, or if I take the socks and towels they forgot to take out of the dryer, that they’ll really be gone. All their unfinished things will be finished—forever. It’s so irrational. Nothing has prepared me for this. I’ve spent the last decade learning yoga and mindfulness and delving into the spirit world and mysticism and it doesn’t help me feel better. It’s like I’ve failed at everything, even thinking.”

She seemed so alone at that moment that he was glad to be there for her the way a brother might have been there. She trusted him enough to say these things.

“And then I keep discovering all these secrets!” She hit Michael on the arm, a bit harder than she’d probably meant to. It was a punch that wasn’t meant to be entirely playful. “Nobody bothers to explain anything to me. Like, I mean, I was really happy my family wanted to adopt you, I really was, but nobody bothered to even tell me. And then … you left. One minute you were my best friend…”

“You thought I was your best friend?”

“Sure! We did everything together, especially, well, especially before I … you know.”

“You found a new group.”

“I was a dumb teenager. It was all so sudden. One minute you were helping me understand derivatives, and then you were gone. Just gone. Poof! I’m still trying to figure out how it happened. I had so many questions. The world was one way, with the family I thought I knew, and then we were strangers with these major secrets. Do you know that I found out from kids at school that Ann was pregnant—she didn’t even tell me. Those were the same kids who told me you were the father. It blew my mind. You were my friend. My brother.”

The word “brother” might as well have been a knife in his gut. Not until she said it did he ever really believe she thought of him that way, and not until that moment, with the pines towering overhead and that incredible stillness in the marsh.

“I always thought your family was too perfect for me.”