We’d been sitting in silence in the kitchen for a long time. I knew something was wrong with Amos. I knew it well enough that my lunch was jackknifing on its way down to my stomach. He hadn’t looked up at me or said more than two words since he’d sat down. I wanted to ask him what it was, but I didn’t want to push. I never know what to do. Do I get on him and force him to talk? Do I sit back and assume that if he wants to tell me, he’ll tell me? I don’t know. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I needed a drink of water. I walked to the cabinet and took down two glasses. I filled them up from the faucet and sat one down in front of Amos while I sipped at the other. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked him. He was three years older than me. It was kind of a bold thing to say to someone you’d looked up to your whole life. He just glanced at me and went back to his meal. He hadn’t touched the water I’d given him. It was the first time in a long time that he’d made me feel like his freshman little sister. “I know there’s something wrong. I know you’re not going to talk to anyone else about it. And you know that I’m not going to be okay until you let me know what it is. So just cut the crap and tell me.” This time he didn’t even look up. I sighed my frustration at him. I finished my water, put the glass in the sink, and turned to leave the room. Only then did he speak up. “Katie…” “Yeah?” He sat in silence for about thirty seconds that might as well have thirty years. He stood up, walking away from his half-eaten lunch. “If you come outside with me, I’ll tell you.” Our farm is a series of fields separated by large rows and clusters of trees. The field right outside the side door of our house—which is the door we always use—is surrounded by woods on three sides. It’s big enough that the trees stand off at a distance, and on this particular afternoon, they were waving to us, rocking in that slow, timeless rhythm that they use to remind us that they were here first, and they’ll be here long after we’re gone, clutching their centuries-strong fingers in the earth. Fall was starting. The leaves were honey and lion’s fur and the sun when it’s setting. Amos walked in front of me, leading me out to the woods. He walked fast, and it was hard for me to keep up. I didn’t understand why we had to be outside, why we had to be in the woods. Mom and Dad had gone into town and would likely be gone all day. There were no other houses around for miles. He stopped just outside the woods and turned to me, looking at the ground. I stopped and asked, “Okay, now will you tell me what’s bugging you? Please?” He sighed and shifted his weight. He started pacing side to side in front of me. He hadn’t looked me in the eye the whole time. “You’re the only one who could ever understand,” he said. “I could never tell Mom. She’d blame herself. She’d feel guilty, and she’d make me feel guilty, and it’d just be a guilt parade with guilt confetti and five giant floats each holding up the successive balloon letters to spell out GUILT. And I can’t tell Dad. I don’t even know how he’d react, but I know I can’t tell him. It has to be you, Katie.” He stopped pacing again and faced me. He looked me right in the eye. “I want you to know that I love you. You’re the most important thing in the world to me. You matter more than everything else combined.” I could feel myself tensing up all over, like when you’re falling and you know you’re about to land hard on the pavement, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. “I’m going to kill myself, Katie.” I was too stunned to cry. I was too stunned to do anything. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t blink. I felt the way a baby must feel when it leaves the womb into the harsh, bright chill of the world. Like my soul itself had shivered and shifted. I was asleep. Wasn’t I? Wasn’t this a dream? Yes, it was, a bad dream that I would wake up from soon. But then I didn’t. I slowly, sobbingly realized the unbearable truth: I wouldn’t. “What…what do you mean?” I asked him. “I’m going to kill myself, Katie,” he repeated. “I have to. I hate this. I hate this life. I hate myself. Every day is torture for me.” “What are you talking about?” I was crying now, and screeching. “How could this be happening?! You’re happy! Aren’t you?! You’re happy all the time! How could you possibly think this is the way?! Do whatever you have to do, run away, become a hermit, anything, just don’t do this! Please!” “I have to, Katie.” He was as calm as a Sunday afternoon. “It’s all I can think about anymore. There’s nothing here. Nothing makes me happy anymore, not really. I smile, and I laugh, but it’s all empty. I’m dead. Really, I’m already dead inside. Yesterday, I stared at myself in the mirror for a half-hour. I didn’t blink. I studied myself and searched myself for any life at all. There wasn’t any, Katie. I hate this.” “Hate what?” I begged of him through my moist hands as I crouched at his feet. “…Everything.” I stood up and looked in his wavering, dancing eyes. “So you’re going to kill yourself?! You’re not dead, you’re bored! You need to stop thinking so much about yourself and start thinking about everyone else. Do you know what Mom and Dad would do without you? What would I do? What would I ever do without you, Amos? I love you so much! You’re the most important person in my life! You can’t do this, ever!” I could see something change in his face as I’d said the last part. Mom and Dad didn’t concern him. It was me, I realized. He couldn’t do that to me. That was the point I had to work with. “How am I supposed to live and grow and move through this world without my big brother to show me the way? Who’s going to beat up the boy who breaks my heart? Who’s going to be there to comfort me when I need it? Who am I going to talk to when no one else will understand?” He was coming around. I could see it in his eyes. His eyes that had never looked dead to me and certainly didn’t now. “Katie…” He stared at the ground. “Katie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to put this on you. I’m sorry to put you through this whole thing. You’re right. I can’t do that to you, no matter how bad it hurts. I can’t ever do this horrible thing to you.” He brought me in close for a hug and held me for a long time, like maybe if he held me tight enough for long enough, he might somehow squeeze some of my will to live into himself. “I’m so sorry!” he said. “I’m so so sorry!” He repeated this more times than I could count. Days went by, it seemed. We stood there, holding each other, sometimes crying, sometimes not, but never letting go, not for an instant. When we finally let each other go, I looked up into his face. It was a mass of streaks and snot that looked like it had once been my brother. “Is it over?” I asked him. He smiled, and the stone streaks contorted as he wiped them with his sleeve. “Yeah, Katie,” he said. “Yeah, it’s over.” He started back toward the house. “I’m sorry. Let’s go inside and finish lunch.” We didn’t talk about that day for a long time after that. I was afraid to. I didn’t like thinking about it. I knew I should say something to someone, but every time I thought about it, I just wanted it to go away. I just sort of hoped something would happen to fix everything.
It had been a few weeks since Amos had told me he wanted to kill himself. He had been pretty much the same since then, only he seemed a little happier. I guess he felt relieved, maybe, that he had let someone else in. This day, though, he was moping again. “Katie,” he said, “come outside with me.” “Why?” I asked. “Because I’m going to go kill myself, and I don’t want to die alone,” he said. Mom and Dad weren’t around. I think they were visiting some friends. I started crying. What choice did I have? My feet were cold stones that clunked as I followed him to the side door. “Amos, please, why? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Talk to me! Don’t do this!” He was silent as we walked out to the same spot where he had first told me. I think it took me a year to get there, trudging, stopping to cry, falling apart and putting myself back together long enough to take a few steps before falling apart again. Amos was fine though. No tears from him. Not even a whimper. I wrapped myself around him on all sides and hugged the life in. It wouldn’t leave. It couldn’t, not while I was around. I felt myself sliding down him. I was wrapped around his legs. He’d have fallen if he tried to move. If he couldn’t move, I reasoned, he couldn’t leave me. “What is it, Amos?” I begged between torrents of tears. “Why are you saying this to me?” “I… I guess I don’t really know, Katie,” he answered. “I’m messed up over it today. It caught up with me again, and I can’t really get it out of my head today.” “So just talk to someone! Anyone! Talk to me! Talk to a psychiatrist! But don’t do this!” I said to him. “It’s just… Katie, it’s just I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can only make it go away for so long, and then it always comes back, and it’s always worse than before. I’m really scared that one day I’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I won’t be able to control it anymore.” “Yes you will!” I insisted. “You just have to fight it! You can get help, Amos. You can always talk to me. You don’t have to do this all by yourself. I understand, so other people will understand too. You don’t have to tell Mom and Dad, but you can tell someone, right?” “I don’t think I can, Katie,” he said. “I think you’re the only one I can ever tell. This is a secret between you and me. No one else knows me well enough to know that I could never want to do this. They’d think I’m a demon or a sinner. They’d lock me up and say it’s for my own good. You can’t tell anyone, Katie. They’ll do something to me even worse than anything I might do.” “But you can’t kill yourself!” I wailed at him. “You’re too good for that!” “I’m not going to, Katie. I think I knew I wasn’t going to when we came out here. I just needed to get outside and talk with you for a while. “Why wouldn’t you just say that?” I asked him, sniffling. “I don’t know, Katie,” he said, kind of chuckling. “Maybe I’m more messed up than I realized.” “So, well then, what is it? What is it you need to talk about?” I asked him. “Just that, really,” he said. “Just that I’m feeling it again, and I needed you to help me make it go away.” “Did I? Is it gone?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said, “pretty much.” “Pretty much?” He smiled at me. “It’s gone,” he said.
A few weeks later, I was sitting on the couch reading a book when he walked in and- “Katie, will you come outside with me?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. “Good. I don’t want to die alone.” He was smiling. I followed him out to the spot. I was shaking a little. I didn’t really understand what was going on. He sat down on the ground. “Still depressed, Katie, but I’m happy today. Sit down here with me.” I sat, looking at him, confused. “I’m really fine today. It’s certainly not gone, but today’s good,” he said. “Then what are we doing out here?” I asked. He smirked. “Sitting. Talking.” I nodded. I felt like I was starting to get it. He just wanted to talk, not about anything in particular. This was just his way, I guess. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not gonna do it. I think I’m winning, you know?” “Yes, I know,” I said. “I knew you could.” I leaned my head on his shoulder and stared off into the distance with him. The clouds were casting mammoth shadows over the fields, and then ambling off to make room for new clouds with new lumpy, ridiculous shadows. The leaves were fluttering around like they weren’t falling to their deaths. I wanted to go dance with them and catch them before they hit the ground, but I sat there with Amos instead. He needed me more than I needed those leaves anyway, even if today was a good day.
Weeks went by without any incidents. No more Amos inviting me outside because he wanted me to be with him while he killed himself. He was smiling and bouncing more. He started talking more, and not just to me. He was eating more. I was sure he was all better. Then he came to my bedroom door one day and said, “Grab your coat and come outside with me.” His face was gray, and he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at the ground. “Why? What is it, Amos?” “You know why,” he said. This wasn’t like the time before. This wasn’t a joke like the last time. We weren’t going outside to pick shapes out of the clouds or to think about playing in the leaves. He wasn’t better today. I got my coat and followed him outside. It was cold out. The leaves were down. The sky was overcast and as gray as Amos’ face. I didn’t want to be here right now. I didn’t want this to be me in this moment. I wanted to be somewhere else with a different Amos, where it was sunny, and we were happy and laughing at everything and nothing. I wanted to hug him out of something other than fear. He stopped in the spot, turned toward me without looking up, and stood there silent for a thousand years. I could feel my eyes starting to burn with the tears I’d thought were gone for good. This was the one thing I didn’t want to have been wrong about, and each moment that blew by us with Amos standing there silently told me more and more that I had been dead wrong. I didn’t know if I wanted him to speak or not. If he spoke, he’d tell me just how wrong I was. He’d talk about killing himself. If he didn’t, I feared that the silence might kill both of us. I couldn’t let it be silent anymore. “What is it, Amos?” He began abruptly without looking up. “Do you remember the story Grandpa told us when we were kids? The one about his buddy in the war?” “Kind of…not really,” I said. He started pacing, still staring at the ground in front of him. “The guy worked at a church before the war. His job was just sort of whatever they needed him to do. He would help with Sunday school, drive the nuns on their errands, sweep out the church after mass, help organize fundraisers, just whatever. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment by himself and when he wasn’t working, he was usually at the church volunteering or just visiting with people or whatever. “Well then the war came, and he had a decision to make. He spent a lot of time with the priests and the nuns then, asking what they thought about it. He’d always thought it was wrong, that the Bible was clear about its stance on killing and that war was no justification. One priest in particular was worried about the war, though. He thought that, if they could attack Hawaii, they were a direct threat to the entire country. He was just scared. It was this that convinced Grandpa’s buddy to sign up. He thought maybe it wasn’t right for him to go kill soldiers, but it was even less right for those soldiers to come over here and kill innocent people. So he was sent to Europe. Do you remember what happened then?” “No, not really.” “Grandpa said he was the most efficient killer he’d ever even heard of. He killed dozens of soldiers. Grandpa said he thought in a different way from all the other guys. It was like he could smell the enemy, or hear their thoughts or something. He could find where they slept, where they ate. He knew when they would be off their guard so he could attack. He’d run up on a group of three or four of them and kill them all before any of them had time to react. Grandpa said he was completely mechanical about the whole thing. He slept easy at night. He was just a man doing his job. After the war, he went back home and went back to the church and did his job the same as he’d always done.” He stopped pacing and stared off in the distance. It was the first time I’d seen his eyes all day. They looked dead. We stood in silence for a long time. I couldn’t understand why this had been going through his mind or why it was bothering him so much. I couldn’t understand why we had to be out here, why he was being so cryptic about the whole thing. “So? What’s the big deal about that? Why are you letting it get to you so much?” I asked. “It’s not that…” he said. “Then what?” He started pacing again. “I have a secret, Katie.” He paused but kept pacing. “It’s just that…good people do bad things sometimes, you know? Just because you’re a good person doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t capable of evil.” Oh God. Oh God. Amos had done something wrong. He’d done something terrible. He’d robbed someone or hurt someone or killed someone, and now he was going to tell me about it and there’d be nothing I could do. I wouldn’t be able to turn him in, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t. I’d have to tell Mom, or I’d have to call the police. I’d have to do something if he’d done something terrible. I started crying. Bawling. “Amos, what’s going on? What’d you do? Who’d you hurt? Why’d you do it? Talk to me!” Finally he faced me. He walked towards me with his arms outstretched to hug me, but I just pounded my fists against his chest. I couldn’t believe he’d do something terrible. I hated him just then. Hated him for making whatever terrible mistake he’d made, for ruining his life. He shushed me and held my wrists so I’d stop hitting him. I collapsed in a wadded mess in his arms, shrieking, “What’d you do? What’d you do?” “Shh, Katie, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he said. He let me cry for a few minutes, holding me, rubbing my back. When he let me go and stepped back, I couldn’t look up at him. Not until he said, “I didn’t do anything, Katie. It’s what I want to do.” Light-years away, I was a dying star. I had burned brightly for a billion years, and I was fizzling out. And now…just now when Amos said whatever he’d just said…it happened. I exploded. I was a supernova, spreading my fire across God’s great universe. I didn’t understand at all. What was he talking about? “What are you talking about?” He turned away from me again. He stared at the western horizon. “Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you,” he began, “I want you to know that I’m a good person.” I was too busy bawling to tell him that I knew he was a good person, that he was stupid if he thought I’d ever doubted it. I was too busy bawling to tell him again not to do it, that I loved him, that he was the single most important thing in the world to me too. I did the only thing I could do through my tears. I nodded. “I don’t want us to have any secrets from each other, so I have to tell you my secret. I have a problem, Katie.” He was staring at the ground again. “I’ve always had it. I don’t know why, but it’s there, and it’s always been there, and it’ll always be there. The only option I have left is to kill myself.” My supernova exploded and exploded and exploded. My body bucked and heaved, and my tears crashed out of me. I had no idea what he was talking about. “It started with you,” he said. “You were one or two years old, so I would’ve been four or five. It was the middle of the night. I was awake. I didn’t know why, but I went to your room. You were asleep. You were wearing one of Dad’s old t-shirts. I stood over you for a long time, just staring at you. I didn’t know why. I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to wake you up. I just stood over you, staring. After a long while, I reached down, under your nightshirt. I started touching you all over. I touched you for a long time. I started taking off my clothes, and Dad walked in.” The supernova hit its apex. “Dad beat me half to death that night. He yelled at me that I was sick, that I was dirty. I was wrong and sinful and evil. You woke up and saw what was happening and started crying. You ran over to me and hugged me, I think so Dad would stop hitting me. He did, but he grabbed me and dragged me back to my room. He dropped me on the floor and told me I wasn’t his son, and then he walked out and slammed the door. Dad wouldn’t let me around you for a long time after that. We never talked about it. Still haven’t. Probably never will.” My supernova was subsiding, all of my elements settling into place. I was in pieces, spread across the universe, but I was calm. I stopped crying. He’d told me about killing himself, and he’d told me about what happened when we were little, and about Dad beating him, and about Grandpa’s friend. Still, I didn’t understand. The pieces weren’t fitting together. They were just pieces. The story was a bunch of separate pieces just as I was becoming a bunch of separate pieces. “I don’t understand, Amos,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to me. Why do you think you have to kill yourself?” “Because I don’t want to do something wrong, Katie. I want to, so so badly. It’s all I think about some days, and those are the days when I’m the worst. It possesses me, and I lose track of who I am and what I’m doing. All I am is this evil desire.” It still wasn’t making sense to me. What evil desire? To touch me? We touch all the time, but never like that. “I still don’t get it,” I said. “My problem,” he said, “is kids. I like kids, Katie. I don’t like girls my age like I’m supposed to. I don’t even like boys my age like I’m not supposed it. It’s just kids. All I want is kids.” Now it was Amos’ turn to cry. He broke down. He crumpled in front of me, covering his face with his hands, trying to hide himself from himself. Hiding from me. His breaths came in shouts between his long, shaky, wet cries. “You see?!” he muffled through his hands. “You see why I have to do it?! I can’t be this person with this problem anymore! I hate myself, and I want to kill myself because of who I am and what I want. I can’t do it, Katie. I can’t hold up like this anymore.” He kneeled in front of me, bucking and heaving with the blasts of tears. He moved through whimpers and wheezes and back to wailing. He cried every way I’d ever heard a person cry and a few ways I hadn’t. I was lost. I felt pushed so far out of my comfort zone that I didn’t even feel like myself anymore. Too much information. Too many different courses, so many that I couldn’t move. Amos was crying at my feet, wanting to kill himself because he hates himself. And he hates himself for good reason. And what was I supposed to do about it? “Get up,” I told him, quietly. He didn’t move. He stayed where he was, kneeling on the ground, crying. “Get up, Amos,” I said, softer and gentler than the first time. I thought I must’ve sounded like an angel. He looked up at me. His face was a swollen mess of tears and shaggy hair and red skin. He sniffled, looking at me. He stood up. “You can’t do this, Amos. You’re better than this. You’re stronger than this. Do you know how strong you are? Think about what you just told me, about Dad beating you when you were just a little kid. You still love him, even though he gave you a great reason not to. It’s not because you felt like you deserved it. It’s because you’re strong enough to love him anyway. And you’re strong enough to get through this too. “I love you, Amos. I want you to know that I love you, that I care so much about you. I will help you. You can beat this, and I will do anything I can. But don’t give up, okay? Please? For me? For yourself? Please?” He looked me in the eye for a long time. I could feel his gaze penetrating past my eyes, into my mind, into my soul. What was he looking for? What was he finding? What was he thinking? “I love you too, Katie,” he said. Again, there was a long silence as we looked in each other’s eyes. I could feel him coming around. I could feel him believing me, even as I was starting to doubt myself and my words. Could we get through this? Could he be saved? What would tomorrow be like? What about the next day? What would tomorrow and the next day be like if I didn’t have him anymore? I couldn’t even think about that. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Katie,” he said. “That’s why we have to find you some help! I can’t do it! You need to talk to someone who knows about these things, Amos. Talk to a doctor. Maybe tell Mom and Dad you need help. Just tell them you’re depressed and need someone to talk to. Or tell that to the counselor at school and see if he can tell you who to talk to. Or talk to a priest. I can’t help you with this. You need someone better.” “Katie,” he said, “there is no one better. No one gets me the way you do. No one else has ever really understood me.” “They don’t need to understand you,” I told him. “They just need to understand your problem. And I don’t understand it. I can’t help you the way you need, Amos” He stood for a long time, staring at me. I could tell he was really thinking about what I’d just said. He turned around and stared at the woods and the fields around us. I could hear him taking deep breaths. “Do you really think they can help?” he asked me. I was exhausted. “Yeah, Amos, I do.” He turned back to me and smiled. “I hope so. I’m going to try.” “Thank you. That’s all you can do,” I said. He took a couple of steps toward the house. “Let’s go inside, Katie.”
The next morning, Amos came in my room and woke me up. “Come outside with me, Katie,” he said. I held my eyes shut, wishing he’d go away so I could go back to sleep. “What time is it? Why do we need to go outside?” I asked. “Same reason,” he said. “I don’t want to die alone.” I sat up in bed and glared at him. “No, Amos. I’m not doing this anymore. You’ve told me your secret, and you know I can’t help you with it.” I softened my expression. “But the burden is off your shoulders now. You don’t have to carry it around by yourself anymore. We’re sharing the burden now, but it’s still too much for us. You have to get help. We can’t do this, and I can’t try to help you with it all by myself. I’m not capable of it. I’m not going to go outside with you anymore, Amos. It’s not fair to either of us.” He smiled. “Okay, Katie.” He turned to walk away. Then he turned back and looked at me. “I love you, Katie,” he said. I smiled back at him. “I love you too, Amos,” I said. He walked off, and I lay back down to go to back to sleep. I smiled to myself as I thought about what I’d said to him. It wasn’t fair to either of us for him to rely only on me to get him through this. There were people whose jobs it was to take care of these things. I didn’t like going out to that spot with him, and I decided I wouldn’t do it anymore. I would help him in any way but that from now on. When I got out of bed, I’d go tell him that. I smiled to myself again and fell asleep.
I woke up to Mom shrieking. She was saying something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. I looked at my clock and remembered that I had already been awake. Yes, earlier, I had been awake when Amos had come to my door and asked me to go outside with him. I had told him no and why I couldn’t, and he had said he loves me. Mom appeared and fell apart in my doorway. “Amos!” she wailed through a face full of tears and mucus. “It’s Amos!” She was writhing around on the floor. I didn’t understand for a moment. Then I knew. I was standing under an enormous waterfall right as God turned it on, and the water came down and crushed me and turned me inside out on the stones. I was spread across the rocks the way I was spread across the universe and was spread across all time and would never really exist again. I sat there in my bed, watching our mother explode loudly the way I was exploding silently. She was a few feet and a billion miles away from me. She cursed God. She cursed Satan. She cursed herself over and over and over again. I just sat there and exploded. Silently.
Amos had a closed casket funeral. He’d hung himself from the closest tree to our spot. His neck was badly burnt from the rope, but they said it didn’t look like he had struggled much. I knew that meant that he had made up his mind this time. Mom and Dad wanted the casket closed because they said there was no reason to have it open. They said that people get made up to look like wax sculptures of themselves, and that’s not how they wanted to remember Amos. That’s not how I wanted to remember Amos either. I had gone outside to see his body when Mom told me what she’d seen. I had to know. I had to touch his body and feel that it wasn’t warm anymore. I had to know that he was gone, that this body wasn’t my brother anymore. After the funeral, our house was crowded with people I knew and people I didn’t know and no one I wanted to see. Everyone tells you they’re sorry when your brother kills himself. Everyone felt the need to apologize for something they didn’t do, and every time they did it, I cried a little and said thank you. I said thank you because I could never tell them just how sorry I was. I smiled and then cried, thinking about what Amos had once said about the guilt parade. I knew I was guilty. I knew he wouldn’t have done it if I’d have just gone outside with him that morning and talked him out of it. He’d still be here. I’d still have a brother. I didn’t have a brother anymore. I didn’t have a brother anymore, and I’d never have a brother again, and it was my fault. I knew it was Amos’ fault, and it wasn’t really my fault, but I also knew that it was. I missed him terribly. I couldn’t talk to anyone about missing him because he was the one I talked to about stuff like this. I was exploded particles spread all across a dark universe, and I was the only one there. As the afternoon wore on, the crowd in our house gradually dissipated. The three of us, Mom, Dad, and me, were left by ourselves. Dad suggested we all sit down at the table and have dinner, but we didn’t because none of us were hungry. Amos’ chair would be empty. Dad cried. I had never seen him cry before, and it wasn’t much, just silent streams moving down his cheeks. He came up to me and held me while he cried. Then Mom came over to us, and we all three held each other. We stood like that for a long time. I loved them. I loved them so much. I missed Amos, but I loved Mom and Dad, and I loved holding them just then, with them holding me. I never wanted us to ever stop holding each other like that. I thanked Dad. “For what?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said, and I smiled and hugged him and Mom tighter. | 
