Hours later I cracked it open. He was on the floor, back to the wall, clutching Louis’s old baseball glove like it was the only thing keeping his ribs from collapsing. I said his name. He didn’t look up.

You have to understand—he and Louis were glued together. Mario and Luigi every Halloween. Same Little League team. Sleepovers, movie nights, Minecraft worlds so elaborate I half expected NASA to call. Our apartment used to hold Caleb’s laugh the way a bell holds a note. After Louis died, the ring stopped.

Therapy helped a little. The nightmares faded. He ate again. But grief doesn’t march forward; it staggers. It circles back and sits on your chest when you think you can breathe.

One night in June, over green beans and a stack of bills, he said, “Louis deserves a headstone.”

I set my fork down. “What do you mean?”

“A real one. Not a plaque in the grass. Something beautiful. And maybe… a night. A memorial night.” His voice was steady, and behind his eyes something sparked—purpose, not pain.

He didn’t want me to buy it. He wanted to earn it. “I’ve got Grandma’s birthday money. I can mow lawns, wash Mr. Delaney’s truck. I don’t need anything else this summer.”

So while other kids chased the ice cream truck, he pushed a rusted mower across patchy yards. He walked Titan, the neighborhood husky and part-time shoulder-dislocator. He raked leaves in August because the big maple on 6th shed early and Mr. Greene’s back was out again. On weekends he ran a one-kid car wash at the mailbox: five bucks, no tips. He’d run in, cheeks hot, hands stained green, and feed a battered Skechers shoebox like it was a living thing.

“Three-seventy!” he’d grin. “Almost halfway!”

“Nothing for yourself?” I asked one night as he sat cross-legged, counting like treasure.

“What would be better than this?”