My brother’s silence told me more than his first answer did.
I was sitting on the edge of my couch with my laptop open, the banking app glowing on my phone and Abigail’s purple backpack resting against the coffee table.
She was asleep down the hall. 
Less than twelve hours earlier, that backpack had been pressed against her chest while she stood alone beside a highway waiting for somebody to come back.
Nobody had.
I had come instead.
“Who was supposed to take Abigail?” I asked my brother again.
He exhaled slowly.
“I thought you were.”
The words made no sense at first.
I reminded him that our parents had invited Abigail on the trip.
They had picked her up that morning along with his two boys.
They had told all of us they were taking the grandchildren to the airport for the start of a family vacation.
