Liam is nineteen now. He still doesn’t talk much, though he has words now—short ones, hard-won. Blue. Tree. Go. Sam. Sam is me. I’m twenty-two. I live in a different city, but I come home once a month, and every time I walk through the door, Liam looks up from whatever he’s doing—spinning, lining up his cars, humming his long, steady note—and he says my name.
He didn’t look at me. He never looked at anyone. His eyes were the color of wet stones after rain—gray-green, deep, impossible to read. But his humming stopped. That was something. Beautiful Boy
“He’ll catch up,” my mother said to relatives on the phone, her voice bright and brittle as thin glass. Liam is nineteen now
Not hello. Not I missed you . Just my name, like it’s the most important word he knows. Sam is me
Open. Waiting.