My phone sits on the floor beside me where I dropped it. Screen dark. Silent. I reach for it. Pull up my contacts. Scroll to his name.
Nate.
My thumb hovers over it. Heart pounding. Tears still wet on my face.
I could call him. I could text him. I could break five years of silence with a single message.
But what would I even say?
My hand trembles. The phone screen blurs.
I close the contacts. Lock the screen. Set the phone down.
But the fact that I almost did—that I wanted to—tells me everything I need to know about where I am.
And where I can't stay much longer.
CHAPTER 8
A ROOM FULL OF MEMORIES
NATE
The lake houselooks exactly the same.
Same wraparound porch. Same wide windows catching the light off the water. Same tree out front where Jake carved his initials into the bark one summer when he was nine and thought permanence could be claimed with a pocketknife.
Mom still owns it and I know she’ll never sell it.
For Mom, this house is still Jake's laughter echoing down the hallway, still the sound of him running barefoot through the kitchen, still the place where she last felt like all her children were safe under one roof.
For me, it's heavier than that.
I don't come here often. And when I do, I don't go upstairs.
I stay where the air is lighter, where memory doesn't ambush me around corners. Jake's room and Nora's room exist in my mind the way old photographs do—untouched, preserved, waiting for something I can't quite name.
Just like some doors don't need opening, there are certain kinds of grief are best left undisturbed unless you're prepared to carry them back down with you.
Today, though, the house is full.
Mom offered to host everyone before Alfie's funeral nextweek. Said Kat and Nick shouldn't have to worry about feeding people or making space when they're barely holding themselves together. So she's done what she always does when grief arrives—she's fed it. Turned sorrow into action, transformed helplessness into something tangible she can control.
The kitchen is busy, warm, alive with the low hum of voices and the smell of food that's been cooking since dawn. Her way of loving people when words fall short.
I spot Nick near the back deck, standing with Kat, his arm around her shoulders. He looks older today—not in years, just in the way loss rearranges a person's face, settles into the lines around their eyes and mouth.
Alfie mattered to him. To all of us. But to Nick, he was everything. A father figure and mentor. The man who raised him when his own parents couldn't.
I wait until there's space, until the conversation he's in winds down naturally, then cross the room.
"How you holding up?" I ask.
Nick nods, jaw tight, working to keep his composure. "As good as I can be, I guess. Alfie raised me, you know? Feels like I lost my dad, not just my uncle."
I pull him in for a hug because this is what I can offer now. I can be steady when everything else is falling apart. I can be the person who doesn't flinch away from pain, who doesn't make it about my own discomfort.
Years of work has given me the ability to hold space for someone else without needing to fix it or escape from it.
