The breath of air he let out through his mouth had me eyeing him. He had his chin tipped up. A car drove by. “I was Josh’s age, I guess, when my dad died, and I still miss him every day. You can get over a lot of shit in two years, but I don’t think anybody would argue that’s long enough to make losing your brother any more bearable,” he informed me in that cool voice that was almost sweet. “Anybody that tells you otherwise has never lost anything or anybody that mattered.”

I’d never heard truer words spoken.

“It isn’t long enough. Not even close to being long enough,” I agreed. “Are you ever just… okay with it? Is that what’s supposed to happen? Does it get easier?” I asked him, not expecting an answer and not getting one either. “I forget sometimes that I can’t call him and tell him something funny my mom said, or ask him to come and fix something stupid I did that I don’t want my dad finding out about.” How many times had I faced that reality? I hiccupped, missing him so much more by the second.

My throat started hurting, and I wasn’t sure whether the liquid coming down over my lip was snot or tears. Frankly, I didn’t care. “I’m never going to get to see him again or mess with him again. He’s never going to shove my face into my birthday cake again or give me birthday licks. He was an asshole, but he was my asshole brother. And I want him back.” The tears started flooding out of me all over again, my chest knotting itself up.

“Assholes or not, they’re still your family.”

I couldn’t stop crying. “I know. I had him for twenty-seven years and the boys didn’t even get a dime of that with him. It’s not fair. I don’t want them to grow up with daddy issues, when I know my brother would have killed me so he’d have more time with them. And you know what? I would have been okay with that. If something happened to me, it would have been different.” I wiped at my face again. “This is so fucking unfair for Josh and Lou and my parents. It’s bullshit. It’s just fucking bullshit.”

He turned to look at me over his shoulder, the yellow lights of the deck lighting up the side of his strong jaw and straight, long nose. “I’m not saying it isn’t bullshit. It is. I don’t know why somebody lives and somebody else dies, but it happens and nothing you do can change that. You can’t feel guilty for being here and him not. That isn’t the way it works.”

I let out this moan at his words, shaking my head.

“Diana,” he said in that sensitive tone that seemed so foreign on his scratchy vocal chords. “I’ve seen you with them enough. You don’t… it doesn’t look like they’re not yours. It’s clear as day to me that those boys love you like you’re more than their aunt. A blind man could see that. They wouldn’t love you if you weren’t doing shit right. That’s gotta mean something, bullshit or not. You got this job to do and nothing is going to take it away from you. At least you’re killing it. I don’t know your brother, but if he’s somewhere looking down right now, at least he knows he made the right choice leaving them to you. You can’t hide what you have with them.”

There was something in his words and tone that eased just a little of the pain cracking my heart open. Just a little. I sniffled and thought about that undying loyalty the three of us shared with each other. Maybe the situation that brought us together sucked, but I loved them more than I’d ever loved anything doubled and tripled. “They really do love me. But they always have.”

His shrug made it seem like he’d just solved some great mystery. “I don’t got any kids, but I got a lot of friends who do, and if it makes you feel better, I don’t think any of them have a fucking clue what they’re doing half the time anyway. My mom sure as hell didn’t.”

I wasn’t sure I really believed that, but I didn’t feel like arguing.

“Your brother left them to you in his will?”

I nodded and slowly leaned forward to wrap my arms around my shins, my chin going to my knees. I’d accepted that trying to keep my face dry was pointless. “Yeah. It was in his and his wife’s will. If anything ever happened to the both of them, I’d be their guardian, not my parents or the other set of grandparents. Me. Those idiots. I never even had a dog before them.” Thinking back on the months after Rodrigo passed weren’t something I liked reminiscing on, especially not when I thought about Mandy, too. What had started off with me taking the boys for a little while because she’d been out of her mind had become the last permanent thing the boys had.

He nodded, still watching me with those curious eyes that weren’t filled with hesitation for once. What happened to their mom? I could sense him asking me with his silence.

I answered him back with my own silence. There are some things you couldn’t say with words.

He stared at me for a minute before something inside of him said I get it. “I think that says it all right there,” he finally chimed in. “If you’re telling me he loved his kids enough to give you the ax if he could have, he wouldn’t have left them to you if he didn’t think you could handle it.”

No, it was Mandy who should have had them, not me. But it did end up being me, and like he’d said, there was nothing I could do to change what was already done. “Well yeah. No one’s going to love them like I do. I’m the best of the worst.” I could say that. It was the truth. I’d pulled myself out of the hole I’d been in for them when other people hadn’t been able to, and it had only been because of that love for those two boys who had stolen my heart before they’d even been born, that I’d managed.