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a furtive counsel. I was surprised at how naturally I acted to guard him from seeming weak. He who used to tower above me, who had never shown weakness and would never ask for assistance, now sheltered under my wing.
    There was no doubt that our dad loved Aiden. His first-born. His pride and joy. The two of them had squabbled regularly as Aiden came of age, like magnets repel identical poles. There was always a fight, followed by a cooling-off period that could last days or weeks. They would come back together without apologies or explanations. Nothing either of them did could break the bond they shared any more than they could negate gravity. God knows they tested the limits of those physics.
    My father drew away and resumed his perch on the throne. “I need to talk to these people,” he said, nodding at the cluster of bodies at the threshold. “Come by the house later. Vickie’s out there. Get the address from her.”
    So Vickie was still with him. I had no intention of asking her for anything.
    Instead of leaving the small room, I side-stepped deeper inside to allow others to enter. For me, there was still the mystery of the quiet young woman who had been as unobtrusive as a flower arrangement while my father and I had weathered our surge. I wanted to blurt out, “Who are you?” but it seemed I was the one at a loss. Shouldn’t I have known who was close enough to Aiden to sit in this place of privilege at his wake?
    “Ethan,” she said. Her voice was confident, as if she not only knew who I was but knew me personally. “I’m sorry about Aiden. You meant so much to him.”
    It might have been her voice itself that dusted off my memory, but as she spoke a glimmer of who she was flickered in my mind. I held her face up to a few photographs I could hazily recall and felt certain enough to utter the name, “Paige?”
    “Oh my god. I forget. We’ve never met in person. Yes, I’m Paige,” she said. We spoke in hushed tones to not disturb the main attraction next to us, where two men had come in together to stand before my dad. Paige leaned forward, forearms on knees. Her hands seemed to work some invisible puzzle, but her face was lifted toward mine. “Aiden talked about you practically every day.”
    So that was her. Paige Gardner. Aiden’s fiancé. Or was she his wife now, his widow? No, Aiden would have called me.
    “It’s nice to finally…” I said, but my own thoughts interrupted me. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know… were you married?”
    Her face aged a year as she maintained eye contact like peering into a hurricane of sand.
    “We broke off the engagement last year,” she said, even lower than before. “He moved out.”
    Why hadn’t Aiden told me? And what was she doing there if they had broken up? Was she so starved for attention that she’d play the grief-stricken widow to steal mourners’ pity for herself?
    I realized my expression was revealing those harsh judgments to Paige. So I erased all expression and said, “He loved you, too. I could tell from how he talked about you.”
    She winced a tight, painful grin and tucked her chin toward her chest. I watched the crown of her head shake back and forth a few times as if she were denying release to her swelling emotions. Her hands still twisted and turned that unseen puzzle. I noticed she didn’t wear a ring.
    She lifted her chin a bit and I could see her eyes were closed. She turned her head toward the back corner of the room behind my right shoulder, away from my father and the people coming and going. “Look, I don’t want to be here,” she said in a strained whisper. Her eyes darted toward my father, as if suggesting an explanation. “Your dad insisted. But I’m here because I loved Aiden. We were working on things, all right? But he was getting in with the wrong people and now this is where we are.”
    She stood abruptly, shielded her face as she started to cry. She touched my forearm and said, “Can we talk later?”
    Before