The first thing I do when I come to is pull the fucking tube from my throat and sit up, searching for somewhere to empty my stomach.

Dad’s next to me, holding a trash can beneath my chin.

I puke and I puke and I puke until I can no longer breathe.

My head pounds. My heart does the same.

Dad strokes my head, my back. “Let it out, son.”

Doctors and nurses and too many people fill the room, and I fall back on the bed, call out for Mary.

She isn’t here.

Neither are her friends.

The only one here is Misery, and Misery becomes my poison, weakening all my senses.

I close my eyes, let her destroy me.

* * *

The voices are hushed but loud enough to hear through the fog of my mind.

“It makes sense.”

“He was always acting up, but it got worse around that time.”

“I think we all assumed it was because of Mom getting sick.”

“Why wouldn’t he say something to us?”

“Be glad that motherfucker’s already dead.”

“What do we do about Aubrey?”

Aubrey…?

My jaw tenses.

They know.

They all know.

Melissa… she must have told them...

My shoulders shake before the sound of my cries fall weakly from my throat.

Tears land on my pillow, wetting my temple.

“You’re okay, son. We’re here. We’re all here for you.”

Dad reaches for my hand.

I pull it away.

* * *

Hours pass. I stay semi-lucid. The door of the hospital room is forever opening, closing.

People come in.

People go out.

Laney cries.

Lucas comforts her.

Leo stands by the door, his hands behind his back, his head lowered.

The twins whisper to each other but never to me.

Lachlan isn’t here.

Neither is Lucy.

Dad sits in a chair next to the bed. He never leaves my side.

I don’t want them here.

I only want Mary.

And she’s nowhere to be found.

Cameron enters, stands with Leo.

Still no Lucy.

I remember the steering wheel shaking in my grip, the bump of the seat as I sped through the property. I remember seeing the lake. And I remember wanting to be submerged…

I’m twenty years old, and all I wanted was to hear my mother’s voice.

“Dad?” I whisper, and he leans forward, his eyes wide. It’s the first time I’ve spoken. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, his tired, worried eyes on mine. “No, Logan. No one is as sorry I am. I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry—”

“Stop it!” Lincoln cries. “We’re all sorry.” He walks over to me, stops next to Dad. “God, Logan. We’re so sorry.”

The doctor comes in, someone I don’t know. He has a clipboard and stethoscope. They all do. He asks about my medical history, my allergies, my past intake of drugs. That’s when I lower my gaze, ask everyone to leave. I don’t have the energy to hold on to secrets, and so I tell the doctor about my unconditional love for Mary, about her friends, about the good times we all had together.

When he leaves, no one else takes his place.

I lie in the bed, stare up at the ceiling, the beeps of the machines sound around me—another playlist, just one song, one genre. In my head, I title the playlist “The Downfall.”

Time passes too slowly, and then the door opens and Lucy appears. “Hey,” she says, her voice low. Her short legs shuffle across the room and toward me, where she stops at the foot of the bed, her eyes on mine. She’s in flannel pajamas, the type Mom used to wear, and she looks so much like her that it rips at my heart.

I try to respond, but my words catch in my throat.

Then Lucy’s trying and failing to get onto the bed with me. I reach to the side, where the controller sits, and lower the bed for her, let the electronic whir fill the room. When it’s completely down, she climbs on and settles in next to me. I start to move to give her more room, but she asks, “Stay close?” And so I do.

She settles onto her back, I do the same, and then we let the silence bleed into the atmosphere. Regret stretches time, and time stretches pain, and I roll my head to the side, watch the single tear streaking down my sister’s temple.

For the year before my mother died and the few months after, Lucy became the strength that mom’s cancer had left behind. I reach up, wipe away her liquid sadness with the back of my finger. “I’m sorry for putting you through—”

“Shut up, Logan,” she says, her jaw unmoving. “Don’t you dare—” She breaks off on a sob that clogs my throat. Then she turns to her side, both hands under her head. The direction of her tears change, and I wipe all of them away. “I love you so much, and I’ll never stop loving you. Ever. And I’m so, so sorry that you—that you…”

“I know, Luce. We don’t…” I shut my eyes tight and count to five, before opening them again. “I don’t want to…”

Nodding against the pillow, she says, “I understand. And I won’t make you, Logan. I won’t ever make you do anything you don’t want to.” She rolls onto her back again but keeps her eyes on me. “But, I have to tell you something…”

“Okay…?”

Her lips tremble with the force of her exhale. “I’m not going to lie, Logan. I worry about you, especially now, knowing what we know, I worry that you—that things are going to get worse with you and that you’re going to fall into this cycle, and we—Dad and us—we’ll have no choice but to watch someone else we love slowly die…”

“Lucy,” I whisper. “It’s not that bad…”

“For you, maybe,” she says, looking down at the space between us. “But for us… it’s the same, because we can’t control it. We can’t control you.”

The struggle for air squeezes at my lungs, at my throat.

“You know,” she adds, “before Cam and I lost that baby, we would always talk about our kids, about our future…” Her tears come faster now. Freer. She glances up at me, then back down.

If I could hold her hand, I would.

“I always had this picture in my head,” she says, “this one scene where we’d come by the house and y’all were there. I’d open the car door, and our daughter would be in her seat—blue eyes and pigtails—and as soon as I had her unbuckled, she’d be off running toward her Uncle Logan, her favorite uncle…”

My heart skips a beat. Two. I struggle to ask, “I’d be her favorite?”

“Yeah,” Lucy says, nodding. She looks up, right into my eyes, and keeps me pinned to her stare. “I mean, when you think about it, she’d be a pretty lucky girl to have all those uncles looking out for her. But with Lucas, he’d be her protector, you know? And Leo, he’d be the serious one. The one trying to teach her all about morals and”—she rolls her eyes—“how to be a lady.”

I can’t help but smile.

“But you, Logan—you’d be the fun uncle. The one who’d skip out on work just to take her to the zoo. You’d be the first to dress up as a fairy if she asked you to. You’d for sure be her favorite, and she’d love you beyond words, and in my mind, in that scene, I’m always smiling when I see you waiting for her with your arms spread, lifting her off the ground the second she got to you. She’d call you Uncle Lo… and you… you’d call her your Little Princess.”

I wipe my eyes on the pillow, and Lucy reaches up, cups my face. “Can you see it, Logan?”

I nod against her hands, sniff back the sorrow.

“Can you see it if you’re too high to see her?”

My chest rises. Falls. “Lucy—”

“Because I’m pregnant, Logan,” she cuts in. “It’s a girl. We’re going to name her Katherine, after Mom. Katie for short. And I want you to be around to watch her grow up. I want Katie to have her favorite uncle in her life,” she cries. “But I’m scared… I’m scared that you…”

I can’t breathe. “What do you need from me, Luce?”

She muffles her sobs into my chest.

I hold her face in my hands and plead with her. “I’ll do anything, Lucy. Just tell me…”

“I need you to get help, Logan.”

And I say…

I say…

“Okay.”