I would get to see him again in eight months. I owed it to him to be strong and carry on his memory through our child.

So that morning, when my sister came, I decided to stop crying, at least for a while.

“Do they have Stan?” I asked.

She sat up in her chair, becoming overly attentive to my voice. “Yes.”

“And Rory?”

“The police have him too. They found his car at a bar a few towns over, where a bunch of people had seen him with Barbie. The police want to speak to you, but I told them you weren't ready.”

“I am now. I want that coward to pay for shooting Bobby in the back. And . . .” I didn't know what I wanted for Rory. I knew his brother's death due to his cowardly actions would be a level of incomprehensible hell.

“Okay. Well, I'll call them later. It's a mess, Lilly, and I think you should take it easy. The doctor says you need a lot of rest. With the bleeding so early on, you have to be cautious.”

“I'm not worried about this baby,” I said stubbornly. “She's got Bobby in her.”

“She?” Julia asked.

“She,” I confirmed.

Julia nodded in concession. I don't why I always referred to the unborn child as her. But I had a certainty from the start. Maybe Bobby whispered it to me in my dreams. I think that’s why I was also sure she would be alright.

“What about mom?”

“She's with dad. He can't travel, but she's been driving me crazy, calling the hotel every night.”

“Is she mad?”

“Mad?” Julia rubbed her furrowed brow, exasperated. “God Lilly, we're past mad. Mom's devastated. She was close to their parents and we just lost them a few years ago. And now? This whole thing is just . . .” she shook her head, and looked out the window, biting her lip to hold her composure.

I watched my sister, sometimes as hard as stone, grow weary. And I felt compelled to ask her about the thing we silently agreed to never discuss. The thing that never happened. “Julia?”

“Mmmhmm,” she replied, keeping her eyes affixed on the window.

“When you walked in on us before the wedding...why did you...why didn't you stop me from marrying Rory?”

She shook her head subtly and sighed mercifully. “Lilly, Bobby was a playboy. He wasn't serious. You were young and naive. I thought you were testing the waters. Getting a taste of the other Lightly boy. The one who everyone wanted a taste of. Growing up the way you three did, I thought it was only natural you might have been curious . . . Bobby back then, he would have broken your heart. He would have ruined you. He wasn’t ready to share a life with someone. Rory made sense. He was the safe bet. He was ready to settle down. He had the job and the plans. He would take care of you.”

Never had the safe bet been more dangerous.

She leaned forward, making sure to get her plea across. At some point, I think she stopped trying to convince me, and was trying to justify her actions to herself, knowing she was complicit in helping her little sister weave the grandest of lies.

“You never said you didn't want to. It was your decision to make, not mine. It was my job to get you down the aisle. There was no time to work out wedding jitters or curiosity. It was my job to make the decision to leave hard. If you wanted it, I mean really wanted it, it shouldn't have been so easy to stop you. Making a mistake shouldn't be so easy.”

“Oh Julia,” I said ruefully, “making the mistake is the easy part.”

She shook her head, and sat back in her chair, the conviction in her earlier defense dissipating into despair. “I didn't know,” she whispered under her breath.

I let out a thin sigh. “Julia, it was serious . . . me and Bobby. It was so much more than a little fling.”

She swallowed hard, and looked me in the eyes. “So tell me.”

Julia and I never talked about boys or crushes. Never bonded over such things as some sisters do. She married when I was fourteen. And she went away to school when I was about eight. For the first time, I was able to share the story of the love of my life. Turn this dirty little secret into my truth. To speak of Bobby proudly and without shame or manufactured contempt. Tell the story to someone who knew him and wouldn’t judge him just based on one decision. It was agonizing, but it also made me feel Bobby's presence. When I had to stop, I stopped. When I had to cry, I cried. Sometimes she did, too. I got to see a side of my sister I had missed all these years.

Julia had known the Lightly boys much of her life, too. Though she more often babysat them than socialized with them. Her pain was different; distant and vague. Dull. Not sharp and splintering like my pain. Her life hadn’t upended the way mine just had. I think she still thought of Bobby as a foolhardy boy, never having seen the man he had become. Nevertheless, the Lightly boys were golden. Full of so much promise. This was not how things were supposed to end for them. There was tragedy in that fact alone.

Julia’s motherly instinct towards Bobby and me had been reinvigorated by this tragedy. It showed in the way she sat vigil by my bed. It showed in the way she began making arrangements for my hospital leave. She would make sure that our child and I would be safe. If Julia did anything well as a sister, it was taking care of business. She loved not with hugs but by being there when she was needed.

When we were done, I could tell something weighed heavily in Julia's thoughts.

“Bobby's funeral is tomorrow.”

There are some things that even when you know they are coming, they still blindside you. Bobby's funeral was inevitable. But there was still some fantastical side of me that held on to some hope of magic. But the magic had died with Bobby.

“Rory's out on bail. And he'll be there.”

“I don't want to go,” I said. I didn't want to see Bobby like that. Bobby was burnt orange and blush sunsets on the lake. He was laughter so hard it hurt. He was the cool grass between my toes on a stifling day. He was homemade cherry pie. He was dancing barefoot on a creaky wood floor to an old record.

He was not a funeral. He was not a corpse.

Most importantly, I didn't want Bobby's funeral to be reduced to a spectacle. By now, everyone knew what had happened. How a quiet suburb in the Midwest had become the scene for illicit affairs, drunken car crashes and murder during a sweltering couple of days in mid-July.

No, instead, I would use that time to follow his wishes. But I needed my sister's help. And I hoped after telling her our story, she would understand.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said. “It's important.”

Will was silent for a while after I told him the news. I waited patiently on the other end. Bobby wasn't just important to me. Bobby helped Will heal from the loss of his brother. And while he couldn't replace Curtis, he helped patch the hole that was left behind. In just a few years, Will lost another brother.

He broke the silence. “I'm so sorry, Lilly. Oh man,” he gasped.

“Thank you,” I sobbed.

“He knew . . .” he rasped.

“What do you mean?”

“He would say to me that he felt that he was supposed to die. That he eked out some extra time, but he felt it was a gift. A gift Curtis gave to him by standing where he stood. Had their order been reversed . . .” Will paused to collect himself. “I told him not to be so damned morose. But he told me that he thought it was so he could see you again. Fix the things he messed up.”

I clenched my throat around the knot that formed. If I let it rise, I wouldn't be able to speak. “He said that to me. When he was on the ground, in my arms. And he made me promise to call you. He cared about you so much . . .” I had to stop to fight the eruption threatening to escape my chest.