Is there anyone who isn’t privy to the inner workings of my life besides me? “And that.”

It’s a heavy pause. Weighted enough that I consider retracting the question. My mom smiled all the time. My mom laughed almost every night. My mom had a secret that she may or may not have ever told me.

“Our father abused her.”

I press both hands to my face as if I could erase his answer. “Abused her?”

“The devil is in the details with this one. There are some things that are better off left with the dead.”

But the imagination could be worse. My mom.

My mom.

Tears fill my eyes, and I think of all the times she’d stare at me from across the room and out of nowhere say, “I love you.” All the times I took for granted that I’d hear those words again. All the times that she might have craved a hug and I was too damn selfish with my life to comprehend she possessed her own demons.

“How bad?”

“Bad,” he says as a whisper.

To think that someone hurt her. That someone that was supposed to love her hurt her—I slam my fist into the side wall, and when the ache slicing through my fingers doesn’t disperse the anger, I punch the wall again.

“Was she in pain?” I ask, my voice breaking. “Did it haunt her?”

“There are some things that happen in life that you never forget. A branding on your soul, if you will. Like losing your parents. It’s there. It happened. And it will never be taken back.”

That’s the insanity of the situation. The hurt that I face every morning. My foot bounces like Echo’s, and I try to wipe away the moisture causing the world to blur.

“Do you want to know why she named you Noah?”

What the hell is wrong with this guy? “I don’t give a...” House of God. My mother would be devastated if I cursed in a confessional in the house of God. “I don’t care. Not anymore.”

I try to breathe through the thoughts...that my mother was a child. That my mother was in pain.

“But this is the important part,” he says in a soothing tone. “The part your mother would want you to know. She found hope. Your mother found hope and love, which is important because without love—we are nothing.”

“She found Dad.” And they married young. Out of college. Twenty-two. Starting out before most. Struggling for years. They had me before they could afford the rent on their first apartment, hence the gigantic gap between me and my brothers.

“Yes, she found your father, but you are the one that saved that small part of her soul that even he couldn’t reach.”

I freeze, no air entering my chest. “She died because of me.”

He’s silent, and the bench on his end creaks as he shifts. His face occupies the small window, but I focus on the wooden floorboards beneath my feet.

“I read the reports,” he says. “You had nothing to do with that fire. And before you say anything, I’ve read the updated reports. I’m aware of the candle in the bathroom and that Jacob meant no harm.”

I shake my head as if to shake away the reality. To deny what really happened. “Mom wasn’t the type to stay up. My job was to be home on time for curfew.”

I still remember the way my heart picked up speed when the car I was riding in turned the corner and I spotted the lick of flames shooting out of my younger brother’s window on the second floor. How the car hadn’t fully stopped when I bolted out of the backseat and ran up the front walk and kicked open the front door.

The girl I had been with was screaming my name and so were her parents, but they didn’t follow. No one followed.

The smoke was thick, and I hunched over in a fit of coughs. The urge was to go up, into the heart of the fire, to drag out the people who meant the most to me in life, but then I heard the small voices of my brothers, and I realized in that moment that I loved them more.

My head drops, and a single tear falls down my face. I loved them more.

“You did exactly what your mother would have wanted. She loved you boys more than her own life.”

“Got all that from two phone calls a year?” I attempt to shut the emotion down, but the rough sound of my voice confirms we’re past that point.

“There are some things in life that you can know about a person in thirty seconds. She loved you, Noah. With all her heart, all her soul and all her mind.”

“I didn’t go after her or my dad,” I admit, and I slam my eyes shut. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been four years since my last confession. “I didn’t fight hard enough.”

“There was nothing you could have done. Saving your brothers was an extraordinary feat.”

The sight of my mother bowing her head during service sweeps into my mind as she reverently mumbled the prayer—that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do...

I failed in saving them. “I handed Jacob and Tyler off to neighbors. The police were there, and the firefighters just pulled up and I turned back for the door, but this guy—” it’s difficult to breathe “—this guy stepped in my way.”

Bigger than me, but not badder than me. I had never been in a fight. Had never thrown a punch, and the thought never crossed my mind. I never dreamed of laying out the man preventing me from rescuing my parents. A mistake, I swore after the fact, that would never happen again.

Echo’s expression the day I shoved that asshole into the building and the words I said to her later replay in my mind... No one fucks with you, Echo. I’m protecting her the only way I know how. In ways that I was too weak to do for my parents.

“And when I tried to run past, another guy stepped in, and I let them stop me. I let them keep me from going back in.”

“Your parents were already dead. They died of smoke inhalation. Not of burns. They probably drifted away in their sleep. The fire detectors weren’t working. There was no warning for any of them. You saved the only people who could be saved. It’s time for you to let this guilt go. It’s time for you to start moving forward. Just like your mother would have wanted.”

With my head in my hands, I rock in the seat, unable to keep the explosion of emotions from killing me. “I should have fought harder for her. I should have tried!”

“She would have wanted you to fight for yourself. To fight for your own life. You saved the parts of her soul that meant the world to her. You honored your mother and your father that night. You honored them with the devotion to your brothers. You honor them by sitting here, searching for people who you honestly shouldn’t be searching for.