Patrick crossed over to the window and leaned on the sill. The mountains rose in the distance. His well was in a mountain. He let himself breathe, but it was the first time their looming presence around the valley’s edge felt invasive, and not like protection. They were encroaching, holding him in, threatening to suffocate him instead of keeping danger out. “Celestial navigation. It’s a sucker’s game,” he said, recalling Greg’s comment about being lost.
So many nights Patrick had looked up at the desert night sky trying to find meaning, trying to locate himself. He would always come back to the same thing: stargazing was time traveling. He’d looked it all up, read every book in the library. We see the sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago. Alpha Centauri—the next closest star—was 4.3 light-years away. When he looked at Alpha Centauri, he saw light that was generated when Joe was still alive. He even remembered the time, 4.3 years and a day after that fateful night, when he looked up at the sky to see the first light generated after Joe had died; he wept like a child. The North Star? Three hundred and twenty light-years. Its light was generated long before either he or Joe existed. It was a sucker’s game, he repeated, this time to himself. How can you tell where you’re going when you’re always looking up at the past?
“Go home, Patrick. Be with the kids. Show them your grief. Talk to them. Show them your grief and help them navigate theirs.”
Patrick had a thousand questions; chiefly, what if he said the wrong thing? “And then what?”
Greg smiled. “I’ll see you in twenty-four days.”
Patrick looked back down at the magazines; there was no headline screaming “10 Former TV Stars That Will Help You Live a Healthier Life.” The very thought of it, ridiculous.
Greg pulled his brother in for a hug. “Maisie wants a husband?”
“That’s what you got from all this?” Patrick rested his chin on Greg’s shoulder.
“I’m just surprised, is all.”
Patrick squeezed. “Don’t you dare hold her to it.”
“All I will ever want is for her to be happy.”
They stood there and held each other. As little kids, they would hug every night before bed. Patrick wondered when that stopped, when intimacy between boys became something to be mocked and not celebrated.
“The dog takes a pill for allergies. Is that going to be difficult for you to be around?”
“The what?”
“The dog. She takes a pill for her skin. I’m just trying to be sensitive. I don’t want you popping them when you get back to Connecticut.”
Greg stood dumbfounded; he could only fight one battle at a time.
Patrick couldn’t read his reaction, so he shrugged—they could figure it out later. He took one last sip of his coffee before spitting it back in the cup.
TWENTY-TWO
Maisie and Grant had taken to wearing their bicycle helmets to breakfast. All day, really, except sometimes while swimming, as they worried about drowning. Despite Grant’s injury, they acquiesced at night and slept without them because wearing a helmet to bed was impractical. But come daylight? The helmets were strapped tightly under their little chins like they were inspectors on a construction site, there to assess the structural viability of his house. All they were missing were coffee thermoses and a tube of blueprints. The previous day, Patrick had filmed a video of them clanking their helmets together like battering rams, a test, of sorts, of their own emergency system. He’d even handed his phone to Maisie afterward and left the room, tacit permission to post the video to YouTube. There were now several such videos on Patrick’s channel. The first two; a video of the kids running an obstacle course he’d made around the pool that mimicked the one television show they seemed familiar with—some sort of ninja warrior challenge—along with his ongoing critical commentary; one where Patrick had hooked bungee cords around their arms and pretended to control them like marionettes; and one in the hospital they’d filmed in the style of a talk show, except they each held their tongues down with depressors. Patrick got a perverse kick out of the online response, although he didn’t altogether understand it. Likes and subscribers and comments came rolling in. First on YouTube and then on his old photos on Instagram. It was like people were remembering he was alive, discovering him all over again, blood flowing in the circuitry connecting him to the outside world.
But as the kids emerged from their rooms wearing their helmets for the fifth morning in a row, all Patrick could manage was “Why?”