A tear rolls down my cheek. I reach up and wipe it away quickly.
“I watched that documentary on Tian Keng yesterday.” His jaw hardens as if he’s fighting to suppress emotion. “I-I didn’t make the connection until I saw it: your paintings, the ones at the community center, the ones in that room at the end of the hall”—I look right at him again—“the one you were painting when I found you that night.”
“What are you saying, Sienna?” He stands up from the bed and begins to pace.
I stand up, too.
“Luke,” I say, meeting his eyes, “I know you’re going to Norway to honor your brother, but … do you really, down deep inside of you, feel like it’s going to help make his death OK?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing will ever make his death OK.”
“I know, but”—I’m struggling to find the words; this is all so much harder than I expected, and I expected it to be excruciating—“but do you really have jump off that rock?”
His eyes crease with confusion.
“Have to?” he says. “I—well, I want to. Landon and I were going to do it together. On his birthday. We made plans. And I—”
He stops and stares at the wall, struggling as much as I was moments ago. When he looks back at me, there’s even more pain in his eyes. More guilt. More heartbreak. More of everything that makes me want to take back everything I’ve said.
And I feel every ounce of it, burning me from the inside out.
“I was supposed to jump with him in China,” he says, angry with himself, and although he’s said these things aloud to me before, I feel like this time he’s repeating them only to himself, condemning himself with the memory, over and over again. “I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to check his pack like I had always done. I was supposed to be there.” Tears fall from his eyes and it’s breaking my heart—and taking everything in me not to reach out and comfort him. But I can’t. I can’t keep being his crutch. “But I didn’t go. After all that planning we did, all of the excitement, I was too busy with work to keep my promise, to stay true to my brother. Too busy with my bullshit life”—he slashes his hand in front of him—“to go with him and make sure he was going to be OK.”
He looks beyond me, his jaw hardening, his eyes focused and wet around the edges. His hands clench into fists at his sides.
“He’s dead because I was supposed to be there!”
The sharpness of his voice quietly stuns me. But I’m not afraid of him—the anger he’s projecting is only at himself.
But I know finally, looking back on my two weeks with him, hearing his friends tell me how much me being here has changed him, witnessing his anger seconds ago, the turmoil inside … I know now that I’m not what he needs right now, that this isn’t something anyone else can help him with.
“I feel better when you’re here with me,” he says, but he can’t look at me. “I haven’t felt at peace with anything since he died. Nothing. My life just stopped. I might as well be dead, too. But here I am. And he’s gone. And it should’ve been me because Landon was good.” He swallows. A tear rolls down his face. He wipes it away angrily with the back of his hand. “I was the older brother, but I was the one learning from him. He was the one helping me overcome my shit. He had his head on straight. He knew what was important in life, what really mattered. But me, I lost my way and forgot everything that mattered, and I didn’t listen to him when he tried to make me see it.”
He pauses and looks back over at me. “Sienna, you’re the first thing that has made me smile since Landon’s death.”
I choke back the tears.
“But, Luke,” I say softly, compassionately, “I can’t replace him.” Silence.