The house smelled like it used to.
That was the first thing Sophie noticed when she reached the bottom of the stairs, still in her socks, her hair pressed flat on one side from sleeping wrong. Windex and the good candle her mother only lit for company, and underneath it something warmer, something that took her a second to place before she did.
Maple syrup.
She stopped in the hallway.
Her parents were in the kitchen. She could hear them before she could see them. Her mother’s voice first, and then her father’s laugh, a foreign sound these days. She couldn’t make out the words yet. Just the rhythm of it. Easy. Back and forth.
She walked to the doorway.
Liz was at the kitchen table with a box of photos, sorting them into piles. Tom stood at the counter with a dish towel over his shoulder, and between them the kitchen was already halfway transformed. A framed photo of Jimmy on the sideboard. The good tablecloth pulled out and smoothed flat. Her mother’s handwriting on the small cards she’d placed in front of each dish she hadn’t made yet.
Neither of them had noticed her.
“He didn’t move,” Liz was saying. “I’m not joking. He slept through the night every night. I thought something was wrong with him."
“You kept telling me should we call Dr. Raines. I kept saying no. You kept asking."
“I was giving you a chance to be right."
“And when you did call, she agreed with me.”
“You never fail to remind me,” Liz laughed.
Tom shook his head. “That’s probably the last time she got a call from a parent complaining about their baby getting too much sleep. You were a nightmare."
“I was thorough.”
“You were a nightmare,” he repeated, but he was smiling.
Sophie stayed in the doorway.
She watched Tom turn back to the counter and crack an egg against the side of the bowl. He did it one-handed, the way Jimmy used to try to copy and Brice never bothered to learn. The egg fell clean. He reached for another one.
“He never cried on planes either,” her mother said, not looking up from the photos. “I was worried sick he was going to be a mess when we flew out to your parents. He was what, six, seven months?"
“Five.”
“Five months. Do you remember Brice at that age?"
“Brice was a disaster.”
“He’d cry the entire plane ride."
“And on the ride home,” Tom added.
Liz laughed again. She picked up a photo and held it toward the light from the window. Sophie couldn’t see which one from where she stood.
Tom looked up then and saw her.
“Good morning," he greeted her.
“Morning.”
He studied her face for a second before turning back to the counter. "You want breakfast?"
Sophie nodded even though Tom couldn’t see her, pulling out her usual chair and sat. Liz walked over and kissed her on the forehead before returning to the stack of photos.
Tom pulled the waffle iron from the cabinet above the stove and set it on the counter and plugged it in. Then he reached for the bag of chocolate chips on the top shelf.
Sophie looked at the waffle iron. Then at the bowl he’d already set aside, the one with the batter in it. Then at the bread on the cutting board. Thick-sliced brioche, already fanned out, waiting.
Her mother had gone quiet over the photos. She was still sorting, still moving things from one pile to another, and every few seconds she’d stop and look at one for a long moment before setting it down.
The waffle iron beeped. Her father poured the first one in and closed the lid. He turned back to the stove and laid two slices of brioche in the pan, and the butter hissed when they hit.
Sophie rested her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did her parents. The waffle iron hummed. The bread browned in the pan. Her mother turned over another photo and set it gently on top of the others.
Her father slid the French toast onto a plate. Opened the waffle iron. Lifted the waffle out with a fork and set it beside the French toast. He cracked three more eggs for the omelet and did it without asking, without checking, and Sophie thought about the fact that he hadn’t made this breakfast in over three years and he still remembered every part of it. Jimmy’s. Brice’s. Hers.
He set the plate in front of her.
She looked at it for a second.
Then she picked up her fork and ate.
…
The parking lot of Macri’s held maybe four cars at that hour, the sky still that deep, bruised blue that hadn’t decided whether it was night or morning yet. Brice pulled in and cut the engine and the sudden quiet filled the car the way quiet always did after four hours of road noise.
Serena had her head against the window. She wasn’t asleep, not fully, but she was somewhere close to it. He’d watched her drift in and out for the last hour, her head bobbing forward and then finding the glass again.
James was out cold in the back.
“You want to come in?” Brice asked.
She didn’t open her eyes. “I’m good.”
“They have some good coffee.”
"I’m good.” She pulled her jacket tighter across her chest.
He looked at her for a beat. Today was going to be a long day. He couldn’t blame her for wanting every bit of rest she could squeeze out before it started for good.
He grabbed his keys and got out. He walked over to the backseat door and opened it. James fussed a bit at the introduction of the cold air, his face scrunching up as he looked away from the door. Brice reached in, unbuckling his car seat and lifting him.
"You can leave him," Serena said from the front.
"It’s okay," Brice responded, already taking hold of him and bringing him to his chest, "Jimmy used to love this place."
…
The bell above the door was still settling when Connie saw him.
She’d been standing at the counter with her number slip in her hand, waiting on two coffees and a box of the almond croissants her mother liked. The bakery was almost empty at that hour. An older man in the corner with his phone way too close to his face. A woman in scrubs waiting on something behind her. The girl at the register moving slow and unbothered the way people moved when they didn’t expect the morning to ask anything of them.
And then the door opened and the bell rang and Brice walked in with a baby against his chest.
Connie turned back to the counter.
She heard him before she saw him again. His voice at the register, ordering, that same easy cadence he always had like the entire world moved on his beat. For a while, she did.
She kept her eyes on the pastry case. The croissants were on the second shelf. She counted them. Eight. Nine if you counted the one in the back that was half-hidden behind a muffin.
She heard him pause.
“Connie.”
She turned. Not because she wanted to. Because not turning would have been worse.
“Hey,” she barely managed to get out.
The baby had his fist curled into the front of Brice’s jacket and was looking at nothing in particular with the heavy-lidded expression of someone who’d been woken up and hadn’t forgiven anyone for it yet.
She looked back at the pastry case. The register girl called a number. Not hers. The woman in scrubs moved past her.
Brice shifted James to his other arm and stepped away from the counter, closer to where she was standing. Not close. Just closer. She could see him in her peripheral vision, the shape of him, the way he was trying to figure out what to do with the space between them.
"We’re having something for Jimmy today."
"Okay."
"It’s at my parents’ if you wanted to—"
"I know. Sophie told me."
"Oh."
"Sorry, I won’t be able to make it."
He was quiet.
The croissants were still on the second shelf. She’d counted them twice now.
“How’s it going?"
“Good."
She heard him exhale. She felt him look at her and then look away, and the silence that came after was somehow worse than whatever the fuck that was that just went down.
James made a small sound. She didn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at him.
The register girl called fourteen.
Connie was at the counter before the number finished leaving the girl’s mouth. She took the bag. She took the coffee carrier with both cups slotted in. She didn’t look back at the counter. She didn’t look at the corner table or the woman in scrubs or the old man with the phone way too close to his face.
The bell above the door rang again on her way out.
…
Jimmy’s teammates were easy to spot with their broccoli hair and their ill-fitting clothes. Some of them Brice recognized. Some of them he’d been teammates with, as much as being on the scout team and giving a look could count as being a teammate.
Brice sat in the armchair near the fireplace with his sparkling water. Serena was beside him, her legs crossed, her voice low.
"They really think you’re somebody."
Brice smiled.
“The first one, okay, I get it. You want a picture, fine. But then his friend comes over. Then his friend’s friend. Have some shame."
Brice took a slow sip.
“I just want to understand something,” she turned to look at him. “This is what it’s like for you back here? Every time you leave the house?”
He didn’t answer.
“Because now I understand why you are the way you are,” she said.
Brice shook his head, a smile playing at his lips.
"What can I say? I’m sort of a big deal," Brice shrugged
"If only they knew," Serena sucked her teeth and picked up her own drink.
He checked his phone. Nothing. He set it face-down on his knee, then picked it up again thirty seconds later.
Serena watched him do it twice before she said anything.
“Is she almost here?”
He nodded.
She nodded back. She looked out at the room. One of Jimmy’s friends, she assumed, was talking to Tom near the kitchen doorway, laughing at something, and Tom had his hand on the kid’s shoulder. She tried to picture what growing up in that house was like. What Tom was like as a father. What he was like in college.
Brice checked his phone again.
A few minutes passed. The room shifted around them, conversations rising and falling. Someone turned the music up slightly in the kitchen and then turned it back down. James was somewhere in the back of the house with Liz. Sophie had disappeared in the backyard with her friends an hour ago and hadn’t come back in.
His phone vibrated.
He looked at it. Then he looked at Serena.
“Thanks for being cool with this,” he said, and stood up.
She didn’t say anything. He crossed the room toward the front door. Brice opened the door and looked at the pie that she was holding.
He laughed.
“What?” Mel said.
“Everyone brought pie.”
Her face shifted. She looked down at the box. “Are you fucking kidding me?"
“There are four of them on the table right now.”
“You told me to bring a dessert."
“I didn’t know other people were going to bring pie."
She opened her mouth to say something else and then Serena was there, stepping up beside Brice in the doorway, and whatever Mel had been about to say stayed where it was.
“Hey,” Serena said. “Come in. I know you’re freezing out there."
Mel stepped inside. Serena reached for the box before Mel had fully let go of it.
“I’ll put this with the others,” Serena said, already turning.
She moved through the room, past the cluster of people near the couch, around the end of the coffee table, to the dining room where the food was laid out. She set the box down at the far end of the pie row, aligned with the others, and adjusted it slightly so the edge sat flush with the tablecloth.
Mel watched her do it.
Brice said something about getting her a drink and went to find one, and then Liz appeared at his elbow before he made it three feet.
“Honey, come here for a second. Mrs. Porter is here, I want you to say hello.”
He looked back once. Mel was standing near the doorway. Serena was already walking back toward her.
Then Liz steered him toward the kitchen and he went.
The two of them stood in the small clearing near the front door, the party moving around them. Serena picked up a glass from the sideboard and held it in one hand. She didn’t say anything. She looked out at the room the way she’d been looking at it all afternoon, like she was taking inventory.
Mel spoke first.
“Look, I’m so sorry."
Serena looked at her.
“I was a bad friend,” Mel said. “To both of you. But to you especially.”
She kept her hands at her sides. “I said things. I did things. I didn’t give him a chance to explain it. I didn’t give you a chance. I didn’t trust you to make your own decisions. To make good decisions."
She paused.
“He was going through something. And I made it harder. For both of you.”
She exhaled. “I’m sorry. I really am, Rena."
Serena held the glass in both hands now. She looked at Mel for a moment. She smiled. “Are you hungry?”
…
The room was exactly the same. That brought a smile to Brice’s face. It also nearly brought a tear.
The PS5 was still on the shelf. The controllers were still on the desk, both of them, side by side. The poster of Andrew Luck on the wall. His cleats by the closest door, one tipped on its side.
Brice sat on the edge of the bed and shifted James against his chest.
Downstairs, he could hear Serena’s voice, and then his mother’s, and then the sound of something being moved across the kitchen floor. The party had cleared out an hour ago. The house was doing that thing it did after people left, settling back into itself, smaller and quieter than it had been all day.
He looked at the shelf.
They’d gotten the game when Brice was fourteen, which made Jimmy eleven, and neither of them was supposed to have it. Franklin was Brice’s because Brice called it first. Jimmy got Michael. That worked for a while, worked fine, until Trevor came in and suddenly there was a third option and neither of them wanted to be the one who didn’t get to play him.
Rock paper scissors. Best of one. Every single mission. Jimmy had won more than he should have. Brice had accused him of cheating more than once, which was impossible, which he knew was impossible, but he levied the charge anyway.
James shifted against his chest, made a small sound, settled again.
Brice thought about the Notre Dame offer. Jimmy was initially supposed to be at that camp but for some reason or another, had stayed home that day. As soon as Brice got home, he’d gone straight upstairs.
He’d tried to be casual about it. He’d leaned in the doorway and said something like, hey, I spoke to Coach Kelly today. Jimmy had looked up from the controller. Brice had said it and watched Jimmy’s mouth drop to the floor before he was off the bed and cross the room and had his arms around Brice’s neck before Brice could say anything else.
Brice looked down at James.
He’d never told Jimmy about Connie. Brice barely knew what to do with the information himself at the time.
He wondered if Jimmy had found out anyway. In real time, maybe, the way the house had that weird energy for those last few months until her due date. Brice was almost positive that Sophie knew. She had a way of picking those things up.
Or later, when Connie went to the police.
He wondered what Jimmy had thought when he heard it.
Whether he’d believed it. It never dawned on Brice to ask him. Back when he could. Back when their conversations weren’t a figment of his imagination.
Brice pressed his cheek against the top of James’s head.
He wondered if Jimmy had sat somewhere, in this room maybe, and tried to decide. Whether the person he knew, the person who’d stood in this doorway, whether that person was capable of what they were saying he’d done. He wondered which way Jimmy had landed.
He wanted to believe he knew the answer.
He wasn’t sure he did.
And Skylar. He thought about what Jimmy would have made of all of it. The pregnancy and the leaked texts and the months where people were looking at him a certain way. He thought about Jimmy watching that happen from wherever he was watching from, if he was watching from anywhere.
He thought about Nia.
That one sat different.
Jimmy had loved her. Even if he didn’t know it yet. Even if he never got to know it. And now Nia was looking at real time, potentially losing her life and Jimmy wasn’t here, and the through line between those two facts couldn’t be more direct and brutal.
If Jimmy was here, Nia would be fine. That was the truth of it. Not a consolation. A fact. Skylar would be alive. The whole cascade of it, all of it, every piece of it that had broken wrong, it started with the same thing.
James had fallen back asleep. His weight was heavier when he slept, all of it settling into Brice’s arms like he’d decided to trust them completely.
Brice held him and let his eyes go blurry and the room went soft around him. The PS5 on the shelf. The controllers side by side. The cleats by the door.
He didn’t make a sound. He just sat there on the edge of his brother’s bed with his brother’s name pressed against his chest and let it move through him, the whole weight of it, and after a while the tears were just running and he wasn’t doing anything about them.
He didn’t wipe them. He just let them go.
