One: The Good One
They hadn’t all been in the same room in over a decade. There used to be six siblings. Now there were five. Isaac—the youngest, the quiet one—had died in a house fire. The remaining five sat scattered across a too-clean apartment. The kind that smelled faintly of bleach and stainless steel. It looked like a place rented for weekend affairs or lonely business trips—too nice to be homely, too sterile to hold grief. No one said who booked it. No one asked. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the house they grew up in—but it felt just as cramped. Even with wide windows and polished floors, the apartment closed in on them like a shoebox. Old habits, old arguments, and the lingering scent of something missing.
The get-together was meant to be temporary—three days, maybe four. Just long enough to “sort things out.” Just long enough to pretend they were still a family. No one called it a wake, though that’s what it felt like. Not the kind with speeches and condolences. This was the kind where grief came disguised—sharpened as sarcasm, dulled by distance, stiffened into politeness. Every joke landed with a limp. Every silence weighed too much. There was no mother anymore to calm the storm. Just her ashes in an urn—cool, sealed, and watching them from the countertop like the last witness to their better years.
The house she left behind, now just a blackened ruin, sat unclaimed. They all danced around the subject. Around the fire that swallowed it whole. Around Isaac, the only one who had been there when it happened. No one really knew how the fire started. Faulty wiring, the official report said. Some muttered other things when they thought no one was listening. But none of them had been there. Not when it counted. Only Isaac. And Isaac was gone.
His name hadn’t been spoken since they arrived, but it lingered like a scent. A sixth presence in every glance. The missing chair. The unsaid thing. They remembered him in pieces— Snippets of melody from a piano. Quiet jokes told under breath. The way he never sat in the middle of the group. Always on the edge. Always watching. But the memories didn’t always line up.
Ruth:(standing by the fridge, holding a photo) When did he get braces?
Martha:(flatly) He never had braces.
Ruth: I drove him to the orthodontist every other Thursday for two years.
Martha: You’re thinking of Eli.
Ruth:(shaking her head) I’m not.
Daniel: (clearing his throat, loud and fatherly) Let it go.
Like always, the subject changed itself. The apartment felt strange. The lights flickered for no reason. Boxes rearranged themselves. A drawer opened three times before noon with no one near it. Someone would leave a cup on the table, and later it’d be back in the sink—dripping. No one admitted to moving it. No one said ghost. Not yet. Instead, they turned on each other the way they always had— Elbows up. Voices low. Smiles stretched too tight. Picking at old scabs.
Jonah:(eyebrow arched) I see Martha still talks with her hands.
Martha: And Jonah still talks out his ass.
Eli:(softly, almost a whisper) I shouldn’t be here.
His eyes darted to the corners of the room, his voice barely carrying—like he was afraid to be noticed.
Eli: Something’s not right.
Martha:(muttering)You say that every five minutes.
Eli: I mean it. I don’t feel... here.
Martha: You haven’t felt here since high school.
The others chuckled under their breath. But Eli didn’t. Outside, rain began to tap against the windows—slow and rhythmic, like a breath. Inside, five siblings sat pretending they were a real family —pressed together by blood, and something they could all feel but none would name. And in the middle of it all— Beneath the bickering, behind every sideways glance— The memory of Isaac glowed like a hidden coal. Quiet. Persistent. The one thing they all agreed on: He didn’t deserve to die. He was the good one. The only good one.
