---

Sydney felt a pinch on her arm.  When she rolled over, she saw her little brother.  His face was red and puffy from crying.

“Sydney, can I sleep with you? I’m scared.”

“Sure, chipmunk.”

She made room in the bed for her little brother, then promptly rolled over to lull herself back to sleep.

“Sydney?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think daddy can see us?”

Sydney opened her eyes.  Stared at the ceiling as she thought of how to answer him.

She said, “I’m sure he can, Derek.”

“You think he still loves us?”

She turned over and held her brother’s tiny hand in her own.  She said, “He always will, Derek.”

Sydney shook away the memory.  She was in the present, not ten years in the past.  So much had changed since her father had died.

“Come on, Syd! We don’t have all day,” Derek said yelling at his sister from the passenger seat of the car.

“Shut up, Derek! I’m coming!” She glared at him then turned back to Mrs. Keiser, who stood there watching with a look of disdain on her face.

“Mrs. Keiser,” Sydney said, “I swear.  Derek won’t do it again. He’s just been a mess since grandpa died.  And you know he’s so hard-headed…”

“You need to stop making excuses for him Sydney. You’ve been protecting him since–”

She cut her off, saying, “I know, Mrs. Keiser.”

Since their dad had died ten years ago?  Yeah.  She knew.

Sydney said, “Again, I’m sorry.  I can’t really discuss this now.   He has a meeting with his probation officer.  Can we please just keep this between us?  I’ll be sure he pays for the damages.”

Sydney looked at Mrs. Keiser with pleading eyes.

Mrs. Keiser grudgingly nodded.  “You’re such a good kid.  So responsible.  I wish Derek had a tenth of your common sense.”

“You and me both.”  Sydney smiling for the first time since arriving at Mrs. Keiser’s doorstep ten minutes earlier.

Mrs. Keiser, their next door neighbor of fifteen years, had pulled up her driveway in time to catch Derek smoking a joint.  When he saw her car, he attempted to toss the joint out before she saw him, but instead it landed in Mrs. Keiser’s garden and quickly started smoldering.  Mrs. Keiser thought that the young man had willfully been stomping on her gardenias.

Sydney sighed as she walked down the steps surveying the damage.  Her little brother was always in trouble.  

She climbed into the car, slamming the door, “What is wrong with you?”

“Syd, that was so not my fault.  Who knew that old lady would be coming home now?  She obviously doesn’t have a life.”

“Really, Derek? Really? Are you out of your mind? You’re on probation!  Not only were you doing drugs but you damaged private property!”

Syd could barely control her urge to punch him.

“Calm down. You took care of it, didn’t you?  And I’ll pay the old lady back.” Derek then pulled out his cell and began texting, completely ignoring his sister.

Sydney started the car.

She sat for a minute.

She said in a dark voice, “Get out.”

Derek glanced sideways at her. “Come on, sis. You need to drop me off.”

Since when?  She had been away at college all semester.  She had only been back for break for a few hours.

She said, “You can catch the bus. Just get out.”

“Fine. I don’t need you. I’ll call Wayne.”

“You do that. Just get out of my car.”

Derek smirked.  “You mean Mom’s old car that Dad’s life insurance helped pay for?”

Seeing red, Sydney reached past Derek, opened the door and proceeded to shove her little brother out the car.

“Hey!”  He yelped as he hit the asphalt.

She yelled back at him, driving away, “Solve your own problems from now on, you lazy idiot!”

Sydney drove around aimlessly for a few minutes, furious with Derek.  She thought of all the times since their father died that she rode to his rescue.  She thought of how she was still doing the same thing years later, now, when they lost their grandfather.

Sighing and frustrated, she parked.

She looked up and realized she had been on autopilot: she was at her mother’s work.

Sydney hadn’t yet seen her mom since she arrived for break.

She waved hello to the security guard who had been with her mother’s company for years.  As she rounded the corner into her mother’s office, she paused.  She suppressed the wave of sadness that she felt as she thought, This had been mom and dad’s office once.

She knocked on the door.

Her mother called, “Come in.”

Sydney opened the door as her mother looked up from a pile of notes.

“Sydney, baby! You’re here early!” Her mother rushed to embrace her.

“I wasn’t going to drive in until tomorrow, but Mrs. Keiser called me. She said she tried to reach you, but couldn’t, so she called me.”

“Mrs. Keiser? What did she need?”

Sydney gave her mom a look.

“Oh, I see,” her mother said sinking down into her chair.  “Derek got into trouble again?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I fixed it.”

Her mother sighed. “I’m sorry, Sydney.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“No, I’m sorry. About everything.”

Sydney thought that, all of a sudden, her mom looked very tired.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Mom. I want to help. It’s been so hard on Derek…”  Sydney reached out to take her mother’s hand.

“Enough about Derek, I’m worried about you. My little girl, who never cries.”

Sydney drew her hand back and turned her face away.

“Granddad was sick,” Sydney said.  “We all knew he didn’t have much longer…”

Sydney’s voice trailed off as she stared down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap.

Her mom said, “I’m not talking about your grandfather. I’m talking about your father. You didn’t cry when you heard. You didn’t cry at the funeral. “

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about this.”

Sydney closed her eyes, silently willing her mom to stop talking or to at least change the subject.

But her mom was right.  She hadn’t cried.  She wouldn’t let herself cry, because to do so would mean she accepted that she had lost him. She felt that if she didn’t grieve, she wouldn’t have to acknowledge that he was really gone.

She had been nine when it happened.  It had made sense to her then, to not cry, to keep the sadness at bay.

And then the night her brother crawled into the bed, to be protected from his fear, she knew that she had to be strong for all of them.

It had been a long ten years.  All of the effort felt wasted, especially with the way Derek treated himself and others.  And her mother looked so much older than she was, from the stress of him.

Had she made the wrong choice?  Had she been strong for the wrong reasons?  Should she have begged permission to feel the sadness and regret?

It had all built up so much inside of her, dammed and shuttered.  Her chest felt fit to burst from the grief.

“Mom,” she said in a broken voice, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be strong anymore.”

With those words, Sydney finally began to cry.  She cried for her father who she lost so suddenly to brain cancer. She cried for her brother who never got over her father’s death.  She cried for her grandfather who helped keep the family together for so long, who also was now gone.  And she cried for herself, for that broken nine-year-old who never grieved the death of her own father.

And when the tears finally ceased, she asked the same words her brother had over ten years ago.

“Mom, do you think daddy can see us?”

Gently, stroking Sydney’s hair, her mom replied, “Yes, I’m sure he can.  And he would be so proud of you, dear.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you think he still loves us?”

Sydney’s mother kissed the top of her head.  Sydney heard her mother whisper, “More than he loved life itself, honey. More than life itself.”