“He said our fence was messed up and we needed to fix it.”

I winced and nodded, adding the fence to the dozen other things that I needed to repair around the house at some point. “I know.”

“You gonna tell Abuelito?”

I winked at him. “I don’t want to, but maybe you, me, and Josh can fix it. What do you think?”

Those baby-soft features fell instantly. “Maybe Abuelito can help.”

“Why? You don’t think we can do it?” To be honest, I wasn’t positive we could either, but what example would I be setting if I constantly asked my dad to do things?

From the words that came out of Louie’s mouth next, I had already set a bad example. He looked me right in the eye and said, very seriously, “Remember my bed?”

I shut my mouth and changed the subject. “All right, what do you want to hear tonight?” I asked, using my hands to tuck the sheets in, starting at around his feet, close to my hip.

He made a thoughtful “hmm” sound. “A new one.” Thank God he let the bed thing go.

“You want to hear a new one?” I asked, still tucking him in, glancing back and forth between what I was doing and his face above the covers.

“Yes.” I drew out the look I gave him until he added. “Please. I’m sorry, I forget.”

“It’s okay.” I drew my finger up the sole of his foot through the sheet, knowing it was going to make him flail and mess up the cocoon I’d been working on. “A new story, then. Hmm.” Despite having a lifetime of memories of Rodrigo, some days it was hard to remember things about him that Lou hadn’t heard a million times before.

When I had first found out my brother died, the minutes that ticked by after my dad broke the news seemed to have lasted a million years. The memory of sitting on my bed afterward, my soul a dimension away, was one I could never forget. We had all fallen apart. Every single one of us. I hadn’t slept in bed with my parents since I’d been a little kid, but I could remember physically forcing myself to go back to my room after I’d stood at their closed door for who knows how long, wanting comfort that they weren’t ready to provide.

It wasn’t until I saw the boys a day or so later, when I realized that Mandy was in no place to do anything for them, that I had made myself shed and bury as much of my grief as I could—at least in front of them. Just thinking about her and all the signs she’d given us about how she was dealing, made guilt flood every nook inside of my soul. But it was done. We had all been to blame, and I didn’t want Josh or Lou to ever forget her.

“You want to hear a funny one or… maybe one with your mom?”

I almost missed Lou’s wince—it happened every time I brought up his mom, but it only made me do it more.

“A funny one,” he said, not surprisingly.

I raised my eyebrows and smiled, letting it go. “One time, your dad and I were driving back to El Paso to visit Abuelita and Abuelito, right? Josh hadn’t been born yet. We had stopped to eat somewhere and the food was really crappy, Lou. I mean, both of us had stomachaches about halfway through eating, but we made ourselves finish it. Anyway, we left the restaurant and kept driving because we didn’t want to spend the night somewhere… and your dad starts telling me how he’s going to poop himself. He kept saying how much his stomach was hurting, how bad it was, and how he thought he was going to have a baby.”

Lou’s little-boy laugh egged me on.

“Once he started threatening me that he was going to poop in the car, I finally pulled the car into the first gas station I could find and he ran inside.” I could picture the memory so clearly in my head, I started laughing. “He had his hands behind his butt like he was trying to hold it in.” By that point, there were tears in both of our eyes, and it was really hard to get the rest of the story out. “My stomach was still hurting but not that much. It had to be thirty minutes later, your dad comes back out of the gas station, sweating. He’s soaked in it, Lou. No lie. He was covered in sweat. He gets into the car and I’m looking at him, and realize he didn’t have any socks on. So I asked him, what happened to your socks? And he says ‘There wasn’t any toilet paper in the restroom.’”

Lou was laughing so hard he’d rolled onto his side, clutching his stomach.

“You like that one, huh?” I was smiling huge at him busting a gut.

He just kept huffing out, “Oh my gosh” over and over again, a true testament of my mom’s influence on him.

“His birthday was a month later, and I got him a roll of toilet paper and a bunch of socks.”

“Grandpa showed me a movie of Christmas, and you gave Daddy socks and he threw them at you,” he said between these great big chuffs.

I nodded. “He made me promise never to say anything about it again, so I didn’t. I just kept giving him socks.”

“You’re good, Tia.”

“I know, huh?”

He nodded, his face flushed pink and happy. Even happy, he said, “I miss him.”

“Me too, Lou. Very, very much,” I said softly, feeling a bitter ball in my throat as I smiled. Tears stung the back of my eyes, but by some miracle I kept them in. I wanted this to be a happy thing between us. I could cry later.

The little boy blinked sleepily up at the ceiling with a dreamy sigh. “I wanna be a policeman like him when I’m old like you.”

His comment made my heart ache so bad I couldn’t even focus on how he’d referred to me as being old. “You can be whatever you want to be,” I told him. “Your dad wouldn’t care as long as you always did a good job.”