He looks at Foster now, directly, in a way he hasn’t done inside this room before. “She came to my apartment. And it was just talking at first, but then it wasn’t just talking.”
The room goes very still.
Foster’s hands close over his knees.
“The next morning, you came to my door,” Decker says, still looking at his brother. Not at me, not at the window. “You came to tell me something about our dad. And you saw her.”
Foster says nothing.
“You walked away,” Decker says. “And I followed you, and I tried to explain, and there was nothing I could say because I had done exactly what you thought I had. I’d made that choice. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway. I have no excuse.”
I watch something move across Foster’s face. Old anger. Something underneath it that has the shape of grief.
“It was complicated. There was history between us. I assumed you’d moved on, and I thought—” Decker stops. “Those are excuses. None of that changes what I did. I made the call. I chose what I wanted, and I put it above our relationship, and that’s the honest version of what happened.”
The room is quiet for a long time.
I remain still.
Foster turns to face forward. His hands don’t open. I watch him process this the way he processes everything—internally, quietly, giving nothing away until he’s ready.
“I want to name something,” I say carefully. “Decker, what you just described—making a unilateral decision about what you wanted and thought was best without bringing Foster into it—that’s a pattern we’ve talked about. Protection that looks like exclusion.”
Decker nods.
“But I want to be careful here,” I continue, “because naming the pattern doesn’t resolve what happened. These are two different things. Understanding why you did it doesn’t make it okay that you did it.” I look at him directly. “Do you understand the difference?”
“Yes.” He nods, then looks down at his lap.
“Foster.” I turn to him. “You don’t have to respond to any of this today. You’re allowed to sit with it.”
“I know.” There’s an edge to his voice.
“Is there anything you want to say to your brother?”
A long pause.
“Deck, you understand that none of this would’ve happened had you just admitted what you wanted?” Foster says.
“What are you talking about? What was I supposed to do?”
“Jesus, stop… why do you always think you’re the one who has to sacrifice?”
This is what I’ve been waiting for. Not the confession about Penelope, though that was necessary to get to the root of it. This is the root.
I remain quiet and let them continue.
Decker looks at his brother with the expression of a man who has never been asked that question directly and doesn’t have a prepared answer for it.
“Because someone had to keep it all together,” he says finally.
“Deck, man, our family is fucked up. You trying to be perfect isn’t going to change that.”
Decker opens his mouth.
“Let me finish.” Foster’s voice isn’t angry. That’s what strikes me most. He’s said the words I’ve been trying to find a sideways path toward for six sessions, and he’s saying them without heat, without the old armor. “You decided somewhere along the way that it was your job to hold everything together. Mom, me, the team. You took it all on, and you never once asked if that’s what anyone actually needed from you.”
“You did need it,” Decker says. “When we were kids?—”
