“He said if anything ever happened to him, I’d know when it was time.”
I stared at my son, searching his face for some sign that he was confused.
Instead, he looked terrified.
Terrified that he had already said too much.
I gently took the shovel from his hands.
“I’m just going to clean it.”
“No!” His voice cracked. “You can’t.”
“I’ll bring it right back.”
“You don’t understand.”
He was right.
I didn’t.
Eight months earlier, Ethan had died of pancreatic cancer.
By the time doctors found it, there wasn’t much they could do.
Everything happened so quickly that some mornings I still expected to hear him making coffee downstairs.
Noah had taken it harder than anyone realized.
For weeks he slept with one of Ethan’s old flannel shirts wrapped around his pillow.
Then, little by little, he stopped talking about him.
