Page 75 of The False Flat

His eyes narrowed to slits, and a line materialized between his eyebrows, a tiny number one. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

My stomach tensed as if ready to flee, but I wanted to do this, to know more about Grant. And I wasn’t going to let my past rule me. “You can tell me.” It was what he’d said to me when I’d spoken the hardest words about my past.

“They were killed in a car accident when I was seventeen. Deanna was twelve.”

I closed my eyes. My grandparents had been killed in a car accident. I never knew them. Every time I thought of that, I wondered if life would’ve been better if they’d lived.

When I opened my eyes, he was watching me. “Was it hard when they died?” It was a ridiculous question, but I wanted him to go on.

He nodded. “Very hard. But I’d grown up around death. My dad figured out when people would likely die and how much their lives were worth, and my mom worked to prove him wrong. It was like their professions were in exact opposition to each other, but I couldn’t imagine a better team. They both taught me death wasn’t to be feared, that life held balance, a purposeful coupling of fragility and resilience. Is this too philosophical?”

“It’s powerful.”

“It’s almost like they knew they weren’t meant to live long. My dad even had me read an essay by this guy who lived in the fifteen hundreds, Montaigne. If I remember correctly, it was titled ‘That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die.’ He thought if we could understand death, we could understand life, and thereby live life to its fullest.”

I rubbed my hand over the blanket until my palm was hot. “That sounds like you. Living life to its fullest.”

“Yeah, well, it took me a while to get there. I didn’t exactly fall back on that premise when they died. I was devastated, too old to live with anyone else, too young to know what to do next.”

“So what did you do? Did you end up living with family?”

I thought about twelve-year-old Deanna. She’d lost both her parents at the same age I’d lost Brandon. I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering what life would’ve been for me if I’d lost both my parents instead of my brother. I wished it had been them instead of him.

“This is probably going to sound silly, but . . .” He shrugged.

I reached for his hand, surprised by how easy it was for me to just be here with him, open.

“I was crying one night after I’d tucked Deanna in. My aunt and uncle were staying with us, helping us decide what to pack so we could go live with them for a while. I’d been tough up to that point, put on a brave face. I wasn’t quite a man, but enough of one to feel like I should leave the crying to my little sister, so I closed myself in my parents’ study.”

I squeezed his hand in mine. This was how he knew. He’d felt what it was to lose someone he loved beyond life. I tried not to cry for seventeen-year-old Grant, but tears moved down my face anyway.

“I was sitting at my dad’s desk, soaking some actuarial table he had expected to look at again. And then somehow, I was standing beside the wall opposite their desks. It was covered in pictures of family, friends, and even some of my mom’s patients. Then there were old newspaper articles and framed quotes. I must’ve walked past that wall a million times, but that day, my face rested on a quote I’d watched my dad frame years before.”

He looked out over the rock, quoted: “‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’”

As he spoke, the words itched with familiarity. “Marcus Aurelius,” I said, finally placing it.

His head snapped toward me. “You know it?”

A wave of something I could only describe as magical passed over my arms, cooling my skin, which was weird because I didn’t believe in magic; I didn’t believe in anything, not after Brandon.

“One of my college professors read that quote in a history class when we were studying the fall of the Roman Empire. I remember because I wanted to live those words. I wrote them down, kept it as a bookmark for the whole semester.”

He smiled, nodded. “I’ve since learned that most people attribute it to Marcus Aurelius, but he might not have actually said it.”

“You’re kidding?”

He shook his head. “I’m not exactly sure who did, but it doesn’t matter. The sentiment stands. Anyway, I copied it that night, onto the back of a printed table that told people when they were gonna die, and put it in my pocket. The next day, I told my aunt and uncle I wanted to stay at home, in Nashville. They thought I was foolish. They reminded me that my little sister was twelve, but it was the first time I’d seen Deanna smile since my parents died. I knew it was the right decision.”

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It was soft and yellow with age. I opened it carefully to reveal the handwriting of a grieving seventeen-year-old boy with more grit and determination at that age than most people had in a lifetime, a whole lot more than I’d ever had. Losing Brandon had destroyed my family, had crippled me. I never could’ve done what Grant had done.

“I carry it everywhere I go.”

I wanted to carry it everywhere I went, but I handed it back to him. “You stayed home alone with Deanna? You took care of her?”

He nodded. “I raised her, and she raised me. We made it work. I think I got a little lost along the way, a little anal. I made sure everything was clean and in order and we ate our vegetables, because no one thought I could do it. Everyone told me what a mistake I was making. Maybe it would’ve been easier another way. I don’t know. But I set out to make my parents proud and to prove everyone else wrong. I think that’s why I’m the way I am now: overprotective of D because I had to be in the beginning. And some people don’t understand me because of it. They see me as arrogant, too confident, a know-it-all. But I’ve worked like hell to make sure everything fit together. The greatest thing I’ve learned through it all is that you can’t please everyone, and it changes your world when you stop living for them and you start living for you.”

“Grant, I want to be like you.”