The Weight of Wet Wool

The funeral was over. Three hours of shaking hands, accepting awkward hugs, and pretending that my brother's death made any kind of sense. Now I stood by the lake where he'd drowned, still wearing my brother's favorite cowboy hat—a ridiculous black Stetson he'd bought on a drunken trip to Nashville and refused to take off, even at our mother's wedding.

The dog, Max, wouldn't leave my side. My brother's golden retriever, now mine by default, kept pressing his wet nose against my palm, sensing something wrong in the silence. I'd never wanted a dog. I lived in a studio apartment, worked sixty-hour weeks at a firm where partners routinely compared associates to rodeo animals—you either rode the bull or you got trampled.

'The funeral was beautiful,' Sarah said, approaching behind me. She'd been his friend for fifteen years, his on-again-off-again girlfriend for the last three. I hated her a little for knowing him in ways I never would, and loved her for being the only person who understood the particular shape of his absence.

'He would have hated it,' I said. 'All those people crying. He would have made jokes about inappropriate erections.'

She laughed, a broken sound. 'Your brother was an asshole.'

'He was.'

The wind picked up, rippling the water into dark folds. I thought about the last conversation we'd had—me telling him he needed to grow up, stop chasing fantasies about opening a brewery, get serious about his career. The bull market wouldn't last forever, I'd said. He'd told me I was dead inside, that I'd forgotten how to be alive.

'I'm selling the house,' Sarah said. 'I can't afford it alone.'

'What about Max?'

'I can't have pets where I'm moving.'

So that was it. The dog would be mine too. Everything he'd left behind was becoming mine by default—the weight of it settling like wet wool against my skin.

'You know,' I said, 'he was going to name his brewery Driftwood. Said everything eventually washes up somewhere.'

Sarah removed her shoes, stepped into the lake's edge, fully clothed. 'You should quit that job. The one that makes you miserable.'

'I make good money.'

'You're going to die alone in a corner office, and nobody will wear your hat.'

She was right. I'd been so busy riding the bull that I'd forgotten what it felt like to stand still. So I took off my brother's hat, placed it on Max's head—ridiculous, perfect—and together, the three of them, the dog and the dead man's lover and the living man who was finally learning how to mourn, walked away from the water.