Chapter 47

His absence was jarring. The silence was jarring.

I stood in that silence, listening for the sound of his door opening, his footsteps on the carpet, waiting to see his face, the blond madness that was his hair, the impish grin that told me he was up to something. And he was always up to something, that kid.

Seemed I’d been waiting such a long time now, but those sounds, those sights never came. Waiting and waiting with nothing but silence to answer me, nothing but silence screaming at me, silence and emptiness and absence, waiting to hear what I would never hear again, no matter how much I yearned for it and needed it.

I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands, a familiar pain sweeping through me.