He’s sorry about what now? Nothing in his sentence is correct. “He didn’t die. He’s not even my brother.”

“Who is he then?”

For a moment, I don’t think I have it in me to answer him. “It’s a long story,” I reply.

Noah shrugs. “I have time.”

“Don’t you have an essay to write?”

He shrugs again. “I think this is more important.”

He looks at me with such intensity that I can feel my skin tingling under his gaze. Once more, all these feelings I am not entitled to come rushing in. I close my eyes for a second, take a deep breath, and focus on Peter rather than Noah.

“I was never meant to be an only child. My mother wanted a big family. But apparently, things didn’t go so well when she had me and… after that, she couldn’t anymore. Or maybe there was something else, I don’t know. I just gathered information here and there, it’s not really a family approved topic.”

“Who’s the boy, then?” Noah asks again, as if he knew that I was avoiding the heart of the subject. I think back to all the times Noah could see right through me, and I feel like he might be the one person in the world who knows me best.

It’s stupid. I don’t even know anything about him. It still seems like I could tell him anything and he would get it.

So I speak.

“A bit over five years ago, my parents asked me if I would be opposed to us fostering children. That’s how we got Peter. He was barely three when he came in. At first, he was very shy, and I think he was a bit confused about what he was doing there. He didn’t talk much either. I used to sit in his room and read aloud. He would sit in the corner, as if he was afraid to take too much space, and he would listen. Nothing more. Didn’t speak, participate, or smile… He just listened. I remember being afraid that he was broken. It was a silly thought but I now realize that it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. But after a few months, he really opened up to us. He was just the happiest person I’ve ever met.”

“More than Austin?” Noah murmurs, breaking the dawning tension.

I smile faintly. “Yes, actually. He was just… a ray of sunshine. Light personified,” I sigh, lost in the pain of happy memories.

“What happened?” Noah asks softly.

I can’t believe that I am going to talk about it. I thought the words that have been spiraling in my head for months would never make it out again. It backfired tremendously the last time I talked about it to someone.

“He got taken away,” I answer in a toneless voice.

“Did something happen?”

“No. We were weeks away from going to the judge. We had decided to adopt him. At this point, he was a part of the family; it just wasn’t official. And then his mother reappeared. Out of nowhere. So we ended up going to a judge, but not the one we planned to, and definitely not for the reason we wanted… It went quite quickly, but maybe it’s because I don’t actually know the entire story. In the end, the mother got full custody back and she took Peter out of the state. She wasn’t open to any sort of contact with us. Not even letters. He just… vanished. He was here one day and gone the next.”

“At least you know he’s alright.”

“At least nothing. There’s still this gap in our lives. He isn’t here, that’s all I know. I keep seeing things that remind me of him, thinking of stories I want to tell him, finding stuff I want to try with him, and then I come home and it’s grey, and cold, and empty… I know he’s alive, I know he’s probably happy, and even though I’m so happy and grateful about that, it’s also the worst part. Because you can’t mourn someone who’s not dead.”

We are silent for a moment.

Then he says: “Tell me if you’re uncomfortable with this.”

At first, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but then he moves right next to me and wraps his arms around me. My first instinct is to move away, to avoid this proximity that scares me. But my needs are stronger than my instincts and what I need right now is to let go of some of the pain. I don’t even feel ashamed when the first tear falls.

I don’t sob. I don’t burst into tears. I don’t even properly cry. But each of the four tears that leave my eyes lifts a burden from my soul.

“You know,” he tells me when we break apart, looking away so I can wipe my cheeks and pretend that he didn’t know, “you might see him again someday.”

I know he meant well, but that’s the last thing I want to hear. “Please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“It took me a long time to let go of hope. I can’t go there again.”

Noah seems about to say something but he ends up silent. This time, I’m not sure he gets it, but he respects it.