I took advantage of the moment while he didn’t notice me to try and figure out what Sarah saw. But to me, nothing seemed off—at least, nothing major. He acted just like anyone else. Sure, his memory wasn’t perfect, and he startled easier than most… but he was my brother. Maybe I was being naive, choosing not to see what was in front of me, but what I saw when I looked at him was myself.
He was here, isolated from the world, having lost the most important person in the world to him just a couple of years back. He seemed to be floundering after losing our mom.
Maybe he had lied about hiring a private investigator to find me, but what did it matter? The end result was the same. He had found the only family he had left and, in doing so, gave me the family I had been desperate to finally have.
Well… to haveagain.I had a family, once upon a time.
While I wasn’t isolated physically at home, I had isolated myself from the people I loved the most. Pushing them away in what I believed was an effort to protect them, but maybe it was an effort to protect myself? If I pushed them away, if I hurt them, they couldn’t hurt me. The idea of being alone felt safer. But the act of being alone was crushing.
Gabriel was alone. It fundamentally changed a person when they were forced to face this cruel, unforgiving world, alone. He had lost the only family he had ever known. Of course that left a mark. I understood it better than most. We had both lost the most important person to us, just in different ways.
I looked back at the closed door of the room where Sarah sat on the bed, not knowing she still held my heart in her hands. That she always had and always would.
Maybe Gabriel was a little off. But who wouldn’t be after losing their everything? I certainly was.
