Daniel looked at me for a long moment, then squeezed my shoulder. “You should sit down, David. We’re about to start.”

I did. I walked over to the very back row of folding chairs, sitting in the corner next to an old woman who was holding a tissue.

I sat in the place you would put a stranger, and I watched my ex-wife marry my younger brother.

I watched her look at him with the same warmth she used to look at me with, back when we were twenty-two and had nothing but a mattress on the floor and a shared dream. I watched Daniel hold her hands, his rough fingers tracing her skin, and I realized he had been there for her when she was rebuilding her life after I broke it.

They had saved each other. While I was busy buying suits to impress people who didn’t care if I lived or died, they were building something real.

After the vows were finished, the guests moved toward the small tent where a local food truck was serving tacos. I stayed in my chair in the back, my head in my hands, waiting for everyone to leave so I could crawl back to my car.

I felt a shadow fall over me. I looked up.

Daniel was standing there holding two paper cups of black coffee. He set one down on the folding chair next to mine.

“We’re having Sunday dinner at the house next week, David,” he said, his voice quiet. He looked out at the guests laughing under the string lights. “Nothing fancy. Just some chicken and potatoes. You should drive up.”

I looked at my shiny leather shoes, then up at his dusty boots. “I don’t think I belong here, Daniel.”

“You’re my brother,” he said simply. “That doesn’t change because you got lost for a while.”

He didn’t wait for my answer. He turned and walked back to his wife, putting his arm around her waist as she laughed at something a neighbor said.

I got into my BMW twenty minutes later. The leather seats felt cold, and the dashboard lights looked too bright in the dark upstate night. I drove for an hour before I pulled over at a gas station near the highway.

I sat there under the harsh buzzing lights of the parking lot, looking at myself in the rearview mirror. I looked tired. I looked old.

I reached up and unclipped the silver Tiffany tie clip from my collar. I looked at it for a second, then tossed it into the cup holder next to some old receipts and a parking stub.

My phone buzzed on the passenger seat. It was a text from Valerie, asking why I wasn’t back yet and reminding me that we had a dinner with her father’s partners on Monday.

I didn’t reply. I turned the phone face down on the console.