Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
I take Emmy to her room. The walls are painted the color of butter, each corner filled with stuffed animals—lions, rabbits, a flock of iridescent songbirds suspended from the mobile that Andie made by hand one fevered winter break. I settle into the rocker, the fabric faded from years of sun, and feed Emmy her bottle as she stares at me with clear blue eyes that are nobody’s but her own.
She’s asleep in minutes. I lay her gently in the crib, tuck the knit blanket around her legs, and tiptoe to the door. I linger, just a second, and watch her chest rise and fall, the simple miracle of breath and safety. For a long time, I didn’t believe I’d ever have this—a room, a baby, a night unbroken by panic. The hush is complete. Even the old floorboards seem to agree to keep their secrets.
Back downstairs, Liam is waiting in the foyer. He’s swapped his cardigan for a threadbare Henley, arms crossed over his chest, looking less like a poet and more like a man ready to weather any storm. He beckons me into his study.
The study smells of leather and paper and a hint of the cologne he only wears for me. The walls are lined floor-to-ceiling with books; some are arranged by color, most by obsession. On the desk is a manila envelope, unassuming except for the weight it seems to radiate.
He closes the door behind me, the latch clicking softly.
“I have something for you,” he says, voice stripped of all pretense.
I cross the room, my heart spiking with the old animal sense of news—good or bad, I can never tell until the story is over.
He slides the envelope to me. “You remember when you asked me to stop looking?”
I do. Months ago, back when the pregnancy was new and all I could think about was not dying, not disappointing anyone, not falling apart. Back when I asked him—begged him—to stop searching for my brother, to let the past rest where it lay.
“I know you said you didn’t want to know,” he says, “but I couldn’t let it go.”
I stand there, the envelope between my hands, the edge digging into my thumb.
Liam steps forward, crowding my space, as if to catch me if I tip. “You can open it. Or not. It’s your call.”
For a long time, I just hold the thing. It’s heavier than it looks.
Then I break the seal, slow, like I’m afraid of cutting what’s inside.
The first page is a letter from a private investigator in Milwaukee. I skim, picking out words: James Andrew McCall, a bartender at a place called Molly O’Martin. My vision tunnels, everything else washed out except the black-and-white photo clipped to the next sheet.
It’s Jimmy.
Not a boy anymore, but a man—older, tan, a beard where there never was one. He’s behind the bar at some place with a neon sign, smiling at the camera, arm slung around a girl with green hair and a tattoo sleeve. The photo isn’t staged. It’s candid, a moment ripped from the blur of someone’s real, ongoing life.
My little brother looks happy.
I press a palm to my mouth and sit down hard in the nearest chair. I don’t realize I’m crying until the paper blurs.
Liam kneels in front of me, rests his hands on my knees, and waits.
After a minute, I manage: “He’s alive. He’s really okay.”
Liam nods, his own eyes wet.
“Did you—did you contact him?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That’s up to you. I just wanted you to know he made it.”
I pull him into a hug, my face buried in his neck, and he holds me tight, tight enough to anchor me to the room, to the house, to the life we’ve built from nothing.
“I love you,” I say, a hundred times over.
“I love you more,” Liam whispers, and for once, I believe it.
We sit there until my hands stop shaking.
Later, I vow to write a letter to the return address in Milwaukee. I don’t know what I’ll say—maybe everything, maybe nothing. But I have the option now. That’s enough.
When Emmy wakes at ten, we bring her into our bed, the three of us piled together in a jumble of limbs and hair and old university sweatshirts. She smells like milk and skin and sleep. Liam reads her Yeats, because of course he does, his voice low and sonorous, and I wonder if she’ll grow up loving poetry or hating it.
Eventually, we fall into our evening routine. I type out the last paragraphs of my paper—on Walt Whitman and the democratization of longing—while Liam brings me a mug of chamomile and strokes my hair. The monitor hums with Emmy’s breathing, and the only other sound is the scratch of my pen in the margin, correcting my own overconfident prose.
We don’t talk much, but we don’t need to.