Cats. Rain. Boats. Lemon ice cream. Coffee ice cream. Plastic mechanical birds that actually flew. The house where children hid to live but died anyway.

These are the images that remain the most vivid for me. I was too young to appreciate everything I was seeing and experiencing. My father had barely moved out, gone just a few months, when he told my mother he wanted to take Matty and me to Europe. A post-divorce guilt trip. But two moments from that three-week long trip stick in my mind like plastic to the bottom of your bare feet, annoying and difficult to shake.

The first was in France. My father took us to a small, fancy restaurant. I wore a purple and lilac striped dress and pretty black shoes with the tiniest hint of a heel. Matty was in that same blue suit he wore to church. At the restaurant, I tried to order a coke, but all they had was water or wine. The water was the wrong fucking color, a vaguely translucent tan. So we had wine. A lot. At the end of the night, I wobbled down the streets of Paris babbling about taking a train. My father laughed later, recounting how I called it a choo-choo in my drunken state. I was eight.

The second was in England. We rode down the river, the rift between us irreparable, the distance too great to overcome. London slipped past us as the current carried us further along the Thames. And all I knew was the smell. Pungent, sour, foul. I couldn't place it. I sniffed my thick plastic bag, souvenirs safely tucked away. It was overwhelming, dominating the small boat full of tourists.

After Matty died, my father told me Matty had gotten sick that day on the boat, all those years ago. That the awful smell was him. And instead of speaking up like he always had... Instead of being bold like he always had... Instead of fucking telling my father like he should have, he kept his mouth shut. And sat on that fucking boat with liquid shit in his pants for hours.