“Then how come you don’t live here?”

I look around at the princess poster on the wall, the china tea set on a table in the corner. “I don’t know,” I say, when the real answer is Because you have another brother, too.

This is what happened last night:

I got off the plane and found my parents-both of them-waiting for me outside airport security. “What the hell?” I blurted out.

“My thoughts exactly, Theo,” my mother said curtly. And then, before she could tear me a new one, my father said we were going to his house to discuss this.

He made stupid conversation for the twenty-minute drive, while I felt my mother’s eyes boring holes into the back of my skull. When we reached his home, I got a glimpse of a really pretty woman who had to be his wife before he led me into the library.

It was very modern, and totally unlike our house. There were windows that made up one entire wall, and the couch was black leather and full of right angles. It looked like the kind of room you see in magazines at doctors’ offices, and not anywhere you’d want to live. Our couch was made of some red, stain-proof fabric, and yet there was a stain on the arm from where I spilled grape juice once. The zippers on two of the pillows were broken. But when you wanted to flop down and watch TV, it fit you perfectly.

“So,” my father said, gesturing to a seat. “This is a little awkward.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I don’t really have much of a right to tell you that running away was a stupid thing to do. And that you scared your mother to death. And I’m not going to tell you that she’s out for blood-”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

He clasps his hands between his knees. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m not going to tell you any of those things.” He looks at me. “I figured you came all the way out here so that I would listen.”

I hesitate. He seems so familiar to me, but that’s crazy-given that I talk to him twice a year, on Christmas and my birthday. And yet, maybe that’s what being related to someone does for you. Maybe it lets you pick up where you left off, even if that was fifteen years ago.

I want to tell him why I’m there-the story of Jacob’s arrest, the truth behind my own breaking and entering, the phone message I never gave my mother from the bank, denying her the second mortgage loan-but all the words jam in my throat. I choke on the sentences until I cannot breathe, until tears spring to my eyes, and what comes out finally is none of these things.

“Why didn’t I matter?” I say.

This is not what I wanted. I wanted him to see me as the responsible young man I’ve become, trying to save my family, and I wanted him to shake his head and think, I sure fucked up. I should have stayed with him, gotten to know him. He turned out so well. Instead, I’m a blubbering mess, with my nose running and my hair in my eyes and I’m so tired; I’m suddenly so freaking tired.

When you expect something, you’re sure to be disappointed. I learned that a long time ago. But if this had been my mother sitting next to me, her arms would have wrapped around me in an instant. She would have rubbed my back and told me to relax, and I would have let myself melt against her until I felt better.

My father cleared his throat, and didn’t touch me at all.

“I’m, uh, not very good at this kind of thing,” he said. He shifted, and I wiped my eyes, thinking he was trying to reach out to me, but instead he took his wallet out of his back pocket. “Here,” he says, holding out a few twenties. “Why don’t you take this?”

I look at him, and before I know it, a laugh has snorted its way out of me. My brother is about to be tried for murder, my mother wants my head on a silver platter, my future’s so dim I might as well be buried in a coal mine-and my father can’t even pat me on the back and tell me I’m going to be okay. Instead, he thinks sixty bucks is going to make everything better.

“I’m sorry,” I say, laughing in earnest now. “I’m really sorry.”

It strikes me that I’m not the one who should be saying that.

I don’t know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there’s just the long, messy climb out of the pit you’ve dug yourself.

“I think maybe you should go get Mom,” I say.

I’m sure my father thinks I’m crazy, laughing my ass off like this when a minute before I was sobbing. And as he gets up-relieved to get the hell away from me, I’m sure-I realize why my father seems familiar. It’s not because we have anything in common, much less share a genetic code. It’s because, with his obvious discomfort and the way he won’t look at me now and the fact that he doesn’t want physical contact, he reminds me so much of my brother.

I don’t speak to my mom the whole time my father is driving us to the airport. I don’t say a word when my father gives her a check, and she looks at the number written on it, and cannot speak. “Just take it,” he says. “I wish… I wish I could be there for him.”

He doesn’t mean it. What he really wishes is that he was capable of being there for Jacob, but my mother seems to understand this, and whatever money he’s given her helps, too. She gives him a quick good-bye hug. Me, I hold out my hand. I don’t make the same mistake twice.

We don’t talk in the departure lounge, or as we’re boarding, or during takeoff. It isn’t until the pilot gets on the loudspeaker to mumble about our cruising altitude that I turn to my mother and tell her I’m sorry.

She is flipping through an in-flight magazine. “I know,” she says.

“Really sorry.”

“I’m sure.”

“Like, about stealing your credit card number. And all of that.”

“Which is why you’re paying me back for these tickets-return trips, too-even if it takes you till you’re fifty-six,” she says.

The flight attendant walks by, asking if anyone would like to purchase a beverage. My mother holds up her hand. “What do you want?” she asks me, and I say tomato juice. “And I’ll have a gin and tonic,” she tells the flight attendant.

“Really?” I am impressed. I didn’t know my mother drank gin.

She sighs. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, Theo.” Then she looks up at me, her brow wrinkled in thought. “When was the last time you and I were alone like this?”

“Um,” I say. “Never?”

“Huh,” my mother says, considering this.

The flight attendant returns with our drinks. “Here you go,” she chirps. “You two getting off in L.A. or continuing on to Hawaii?”

“I wish,” my mother says, and when she twists the bottle top of the gin, it makes a sighing sound.

“Don’t we all?” The flight attendant laughs, and she moves down the aisle.

The page my mother has stopped at in her magazine is a tourism spread of Hawaii, actually, or at least something equally tropical. “Maybe we should just stay on the plane and go there,” I say.

She laughs. “Squatters’ rights. Sorry, sir, we’re not vacating seats Fifteen A and B.”

“By dinnertime, we could be sitting on a beach.”

“Getting tan,” my mother muses.

“Drinking piña coladas,” I suggest.

My mother raises a brow. “Virgin for you.”

There is a pause, as we both imagine a life that will never be ours.

“Maybe,” I say after another moment, “we should bring Jacob along. He loves coconut.”

This will never happen. My brother won’t get on a plane; he’d have the Mother of all Meltdowns before that happened. And you can’t exactly row a boat to Hawaii. Not to mention the fact that we are categorically broke. But still.

My mother lays her head on my shoulder. It feels weird, like I’m the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around. Already, though, I’m taller than her, and still growing. “Let’s do that,” my mother agrees, as if we have a prayer.