the small house was filled with the sounds that preceded holiday trips to Brandon’s aunt’s house. Llewelyn repeatedly urging his mother to get ready, warning of the ocean of traffic that was between them and the boisterous chaos of another family holiday. His mother, telling Llewelyn to PLEASE let her think, lest she forget the cake that his aunt had assured her was not necessary. His half-sister, squalling in the background as she bumped between the padded rails of her playpen.

Brandon had always loved this part of the day — the hours preceding the gathering; the anticipation of food, and mischief with his cousins, and intense discussions of recent model-kit acquisitions with Justin. Today was different. Today, his anticipation was overlaid with fear; fear that, greeting him at his aunt’s door would be anger; sadness, judgement.

He had no concrete reasons for these fears. His uncle, as was his custom, had taken him aside to tell him, as to an adult, that he had to make the decision best for him, that he loved him, that he would always love him. And his aunt’s conversation with him in Maine continued to ring in his ears. What about your “tank”?

He remembered, several days after his return home after that trip, his room pungent with the odor of brackish seawater and decaying ocean life, his father having told him that had had not, in fact, set up the salt water tank that he had suggested. “There was no way those creatures would survive,” he had said, to Brandon’s disappointment. He had watched as his beloved starfish, absurdly carried hundreds of miles from its home in a plastic-lined cardboard box, slowed and eventually stopped all movement. Taken from his home; his comfortable surroundings, it had suffered, slowly, only to reach a destination that offered it no sustenance. The metaphor, which had at the time escaped his thirteen-year-old sensibilities, would one day become painfully apt.