Not to take control.
To remind me I wasn't alone.
One evening, when I was sixteen, I asked him whether he still had the recording from the driveway.
He looked surprised.
"Why?"
I shrugged.
"I've never watched the whole thing."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, "You don't have to."
I nodded.
"I know."
He studied me.
"Are you sure you want to see it?"
I considered the question.
Then I shook my head.
"Maybe not."
He smiled gently.
"Then don't."
For several seconds, we sat quietly.
Then I asked something else.
"Were you scared?"
He looked toward me.
For a moment, he seemed surprised I'd asked.
Then he nodded.
"Terrified."
I stared.
He continued.
"I thought she'd take you before Dad arrived."
My throat tightened.
Then he laughed softly.
"And I thought she'd break my phone."
I smiled.
He shook his head.
"I didn't have some brilliant plan. I just remembered Dad telling me to call."
I looked at him.
"But you did."
He nodded.
"Yeah."
Then he became serious.
"I want you to understand something."
I waited.
"You don't owe me your whole life because I made that call."
My eyes filled.
He continued.
"I'm your brother. I love you. That's why I did it."
I moved closer.
He smiled.
Then he added, "Besides, you were really annoying when we were little."
I laughed.
"You're still annoying."
He grinned.
"Good."
We spent the rest of the evening arguing about what movie to watch.
And somehow, that ordinary argument helped me feel more normal than any dramatic conversation could have.
When I was eighteen, Dad gave me the small wooden box containing my mother's letters.
He'd kept it safely at the lake cottage, and every few years we'd returned to read one or two things together. But on the morning of my eighteenth birthday, he placed it on the kitchen table and said it belonged with me.
I stared at the box.
"Are you sure?"
He smiled.
"Your mother wrote those letters for you."
I opened the lid.
The little silver bracelet was still inside.
So were the photographs.
And the envelope I'd read at the cottage when I was nine.
I lifted it carefully.
Dad sat beside me.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I looked toward him.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Do you ever wish you hadn't married her?"
He took a long breath.
I hadn't asked that question before.
Part of me was afraid of the answer.