BEN

He stood in his bathroom now shaving his “grief beard,” which he hadn’t even known was a thing until he really looked at it. Patchy, dark stubble, creeping too far down the neck to be anything but accidental. Ben’s father had sported a grief beard, was a walking wilderness with two dead eyes peering through it as far back as Ben could remember. He’d shave it off periodically to look for work, and it would shock the neighborhood every time, get people speculating, like when the front yard of an abandoned house is suddenly shorn down to the roots in the early morning by people unseen. Ben remembered a few times as a kid he’d wondered if someone new had moved in there behind his father’s eyes. Then he’d watch him go back to the needle and realize it was just the same old guy.

He looked at the prickles in the sink, realized one had fallen on Gabriel’s toothbrush. He picked up the brush, removed the particle of hair, rinsed it, and put it back on the edge of the sink where the kid had left it, instead of in the cup by the mirror where it belonged. He spoke to them then, quietly yet fervently in the solitude of the apartment bathroom, the same words he always said when the bad thoughts pricked at him. Of Gabe and Luna lying entwined in a grave somewhere. Or their ashes being scattered along lonely shores by river winds.

“I’m gonna find you,” Ben said.