At the foot of the bed, my sister-in-law, Melissa, covered her mouth with both hands.
Tears poured down her face.
“She’s here,” she whispered. “Ryan… she’s really here.”
I looked toward my brother.
Ryan stood beside his wife, but something about him felt wrong.
He wasn’t smiling.
He wasn’t crying.
He was simply staring.
At the time, I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
To explain why his reaction hurt so deeply, I have to go back to the beginning.
Ryan wasn’t simply my brother.
He was my twin.
My best friend.
My safe place for almost my entire life.
I was thirty-six and raising my seven-year-old son, Gabriel, on my own. Gabriel was noisy, curious, endlessly affectionate, and somehow capable of turning every quiet room into a small adventure.
It had been just the two of us since he was two.
Through everything, Ryan had been there.
