“Do you think Mom’s okay?”

He turned around and looked at me, blowing a slow stream of smoke into the air.

“I don’t know, really. She’s always been quiet, but since Jacob died, we left, and then Dad started dating Rebecca. I don’t know. I feel like she just disappeared. But she looks different today, don’t you think?”

I nodded my head.  “Yeah, something’s different.”

“Has she told you anything?”

“No, I talk to her every couple days on the phone, but I haven’t heard anything. You?”

“No, we don’t talk that much.”

“You’re staying with her. You’ve been here three days.”

“Yeah, but she reads a lot, and I don’t know what to talk about with her.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, nothing really to say.”

“Oh.”

The cigarette was burning down between his forefingers. I stared at it and wondered when I stopped telling Tommy the truth. We had all been so close back when we were kids. But something changed when I moved out a year after Jacob died. Tommy was still coming home from college in the summers, and he was watching their marriage slowly dissolve before him. He was there to carry Dad to bed when he drank too much. He was there, and I wasn’t.

“Maybe you could try calling her more. Especially now that Dad’s gone.”

“Rory, Dad left three years ago. Calling her isn’t going to bring him home, and it sure as hell isn’t going to bring Jacob back.”

He flicked the cigarettes off the porch and into the dead rose garden.

“Don’t litter.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Lay off, Rory. This is why I don’t come home. I can’t stand when you get like this. Jacob used to hate it, too. We hated how you used to boss us around when we were younger. You weren’t in charge of us, and you always felt entitled to telling us how to do everything.”

“No, I didn’t.”

He laughed out loud.

“Yeah, you did. All the time.”

I stood up and walked toward the door. I didn’t want to listen to Tommy being an asshole. He couldn’t help it now when he came home. He didn’t know how to be around us anymore. He couldn’t sleep in his old bedroom, couldn’t even go in there now. He slept on the couch when he visited, stayed away from the memories of the little brother who no longer following him around.

“Tommy, please.”

I had my hand on the doorknob.

“I know you guys fought.”

“What?”

“You and Jacob. The night he died. I know you got into a fight.”

I felt my cheeks burn, and my breathing slowed. I pictured Jacob standing in my doorway in his silly whale shorts. I heard his voice cracking as I yelled at him, my last words hateful and angry. I fell asleep some nights to those last moments. His last words: “What do you know about love?” They were etched forever in my mind, and he was right. I didn’t know anything about love. I couldn’t love anyone, not even myself.

“How?”

“He texted me. Told me to stay at school. Said you were being a bitch.”

I could feel the tears creeping to the corners of my eyes. I watched Tommy light another cigarette.

“Why are you telling me this?”

He shrugged, inhaling his cigarette.

“Thought you should know.”

“Why do you have to be such an asshole, Tommy?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, his emerald eyes soft in the morning sun and smiled sadly.

“Sometimes I can’t help it.”

* * *

The vet’s waiting room was cold.  The plastic chairs that lined the walls felt hard against my back, and I shifted uncomfortably. Crocket was wheezing at my feet, and I kept bending down to stroke his head, whispering that it was okay. There was a man across from me, glancing up at us from his magazine every couple seconds.

His cat sat beside him. Its eyes glowed from behind the bars of its cage. I wondered if it was the same one Tommy thought he hit.

“Crocket O’Leary?”

Our heads shot up. Crocket’s tail thudded weakly against the tile at the sound of his own name. The nurse forced a smile. Her was voice lined with uneasiness as she glanced at the four of us, grown adults sitting awkwardly together. I wondered if she thought we looked like a family or maybe just a collection of strangers.

I looked at Dad. He hadn’t cried yet. Maybe he felt like Tommy did, that this was just some far-fetched idea that Mom had, that we could finally say goodbye.

“Are we all set?’

Mom nodded and I helped Crocket stand up and head towards the door the vet was walking towards in the corner of the room.

“I’m going to wait out here.” Dad’s voice was low, he glanced at the floor instead of the dog. Maybe he needed to call Rebecca. I hadn’t asked him where she thought he’d been all day. Maybe he just couldn’t get that close to our grief again.

The room was small. Mom and I glanced around for a place to sit, before deciding that it was best to just sit on the floor with the dog. I crumbled against the wall. Crocket’s leash fell against the floor for the last time. I buried my face into my hands.

A different door opened from the back of the room, and an older woman walked in smiling at us. For a moment, it seemed as if this were just another routine checkup for Crocket.

“Okay, are we ready?”

I glanced at Mom who was slowly running her hands through Crocket’s fur. When Jacob was little, he used to curl up on her lap, and she’d run her fingers through his hair in a similar way, her mind lost somewhere, staring off out the window.

“Yes,” I said.

The vet nodded and turned her back to us. I watched her flip through the manila chart and pull two needles out of her white lab coat.

“Okay, let’s get started.”