His name was Noah Whitaker.
The moment I said it, my father stepped back as though the floor had shifted beneath him.
My mother gripped the edge of the doorframe. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. For ten years, I had imagined this moment in a hundred different ways. I thought they might yell. I thought they might accuse me of lying. I thought my father might slam the door again and prove that nothing in that house had changed.
But I had never imagined silence.
Not this kind.
Not the kind that seemed to swallow the whole porch.
Leo stood beside me, holding the strap of his backpack with both hands. He looked from my face to theirs, trying to understand why one name had made three adults look like they had seen a ghost.
“Noah?” my mother finally whispered.
I nodded.
“No,” my father said, but there was no strength in it. “Noah died.”
“I know.”
“He died before you left.”
“I know that too.”
