He liked your grandfather’s terrible chili.”
“It was not terrible,” my father said.
“It was,” my mother and I said at the same time.
The three of us went still.
Then Leo laughed.
The sound loosened something in the room. My father smiled, just barely. My mother wiped her eyes and reached for another napkin.
After dinner, she brought out a shoebox of old photos. There were pictures of Noah and me at twelve, standing ankle-deep in creek water. Noah at sixteen, holding a guitar. Noah and my father fixing the porch steps. Noah sitting at that very kitchen table, grinning at the camera with the same dimple Leo had.
Leo touched the photograph with one finger.
“He looks like me,” he said.
“Yes,” I whispered. “He does.”
My father cleared his throat. “Noah was a good boy.”
I looked up. “He was.”
“I should have listened to him.”
No
