Two brothers

I never knew silence could be so loud until I stood on the riverbank alone, watching the water carry away pieces of a childhood that once belonged to two brothers. This place—our secret escape, our makeshift kingdom—had always echoed with laughter, splashes, and whispered promises between us. Now it murmured only loss. I never thought I’d return here without him, and yet, I had to. Because the river remembers, even when we try to forget.



Liam and I were only thirteen months apart, though we may as well have been twins. From the moment I could walk, I was chasing after him—across creeks, into trees, over fences we weren’t supposed to climb. Our world wasn’t perfect, but when we were together, we didn’t need perfect. We just needed each other.

Home was a two-bedroom house that creaked like it had secrets. Our parents weren’t cruel, just tired—worn down by bills, broken dreams, and the kind of quiet resentment that turns every dinner into a battleground of sighs and stares. But Liam had this way of making it all seem far away. “Come on,” he’d whisper after another fight between Mom and Dad, “let’s go where it’s quiet.”

That place was the river.

It was a ten-minute walk through overgrown fields and whispering trees. To others, it was just a bend in the water. To us, it was sacred ground. We’d built forts out of driftwood and pretended we were kings fending off invisible enemies. We’d skip stones, dream aloud, and share things we never said anywhere else.

Liam dreamed bigger than me. “One day,” he said once, laying back in the grass, “I’m gonna get out of here. Take you with me. We’ll go somewhere nobody yells. Somewhere we can just breathe.” I nodded, pretending to believe it too.

But life doesn’t wait for boys with riverbank dreams.

By the time we hit high school, things started to shift. Liam became quiet in ways that scared me. He’d disappear for hours, come back smelling like smoke and something bitter. He started picking fights—not just with our parents, but with anyone who looked at him wrong. He laughed less. He stopped coming to the river.

I kept going.

It became my refuge when the house grew too heavy. I’d sit there, listening for footsteps that never came, trying to understand where I had lost him. I wanted to ask, to pull him back somehow—but every time I got close, he’d push me away harder. “You don’t get it,” he’d snap. “You’re still a kid.”

We were seventeen when the call came. A car crash. Late at night. No seatbelt. Too much alcohol in his blood. It was a miracle he didn’t take anyone else with him. For weeks after the funeral, people kept saying, “He was troubled,” like that was the full story. Like that explained the boy who once built castles from river mud.

But I knew better.

Liam wasn’t just troubled. He was tired—of being the protector, the dreamer, the one who had to believe in escape. Somewhere along the way, that burden broke him. And I hadn’t been strong enough to see it, let alone help.

It took me a year to come back to the river. I brought a photo of us—mud-splattered, grinning, younger. I sat there, placing the picture in a small glass jar and burying it under the old tree we used to climb.

“I still remember,” I whispered. “And I still miss you.”

The wind stirred the leaves. The river kept flowing.

I don’t know if Liam found peace. I like to think he did, maybe in some place that looks a lot like the river—wild, quiet, free. As for me, I go back often. Not to grieve, but to remember. Because somewhere in the current and the quiet and the way the light hits the water, I can still hear his laugh.

And for a moment, just a moment, we are boys again.