Page 45 of Never Forget
I made notes in the margins of a printout. Drew lines connecting dates and decisions. Built a timeline of choices that had led, step by step, to my brother going back into a burning building alone.
No one had pushed. For decades, no one had pushed.
I jumped when the phone rang. It took me a second to find it buried under the papers. Mark's name glowed on the screen.
"Hey."
"Hey yourself." The warmth in his voice made me close my eyes for a second. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the sound of him until I heard it. "How's Havensworth treating you?"
"Still standing." I leaned back in my chair and stretched my neck. "How's New York?"
"Cold. Gray. Missing you." That made me smile. "What are you up to? You sound tired."
I looked at the papers spread across the table.
"I'm working on something," I said. "For Jack and for Rosie."
"What kind of something?"
"They're calling Jack's death insubordination so they don't have to pay out his benefits. Rosie deserves what he earned, and I'm going to make sure she gets it."
"That sounds serious."
“Yeah.”
“Do you need me to come down?”
It would be nice to have him here. But Mark had a business to run, and I wasn't going to ask him to put his life on hold for a fight that might take months.
"No, I think I have it handled."
"Alright," Mark said. There was a smile in his voice, but something underneath it too. "I'm starting to feel like you don't want to come back home to me."
I laughed. "Don't be ridiculous."
I was about to ask him about the deal he'd been working on when I heard an unfamiliar voice in the background. "Where do you keep your glasses, Mark?"
"Who's that?"
"Oh, I have some friends over." Mark's voice shifted, like he was moving the phone. "Everyone say hi to Jamie."
A chorus of voices came through the speaker, slightly muffled. "Hi! We miss you!"
I chuckled despite myself. "You have fun there then."
"Alright. I miss you."
"I miss you too."
I set the phone down and stared at it for a moment. Mark had friends over. There was laughter and voices and the easy rhythm of a life that was continuing without me in it.
I tried to picture it. The living room where we'd wasted entire Sundays, breakfast turning into brunch, neither of us bothering to get dressed. The kitchen where we'd burned pasta sauce and laughed about it. The view of the city lights from his bedroom window.
I missed it. I missed him.
But I was here in Havensworth, in the house where I grew up, surrounded by evidence of everything this city had gotten wrong.
There was work to do. I couldn't be thinking about escaping back to New York—not when Jack's death was still being called insubordination, not when Rosie still hadn't gotten what she was owed.
