I crept down the stairs as quietly as I could. A light was on in the living room, and I could hear the gentle creak of the rocking chair.

"Who's up?"

I froze. I was afraid of going back up the stairs in the dark, but I was also afraid of being discovered. I crept around the corner timidly.

"Dad?"

Dad was sitting in the rocking chair, a squat glass of amber liquid sparkling in his hand. He visibly relaxed when he saw me, easing back down into the rocking chair from which he had half-risen, and closing his eyes.. "Go to bed Craig."

"Dad, I can't sleep."

My father said nothing.

"Dad. You're home late."

"I had work to do," he said, eyes still closed. Without opening them, he took a long sip out of the glass in his hand, then breathed out through his mouth.

"Dad."

He was silent.

"Dad."

"Alright," he groaned, and shifted in his chair. "Craig, come here." He gestured to his lap, and I scampered across the carpet and climbed onto his knee. "God, you're getting big," he said, sizing me up. "And you're gonna be six next year? God. Feels like just yesterday you couldn't even walk and now look at you."

I didn't really know what to say to that, so I said, "Dad, what happened to the dinosaurs?"

"What?"

"The dinosaurs, dad, we learned about dinosaurs today and Ms. Elridge says they're not here anymore but what happened to them?" I said all this in one breath. Excitable, as five-year-olds are apt to be.

"Oh, the dinosaurs," he furrowed his brow slightly. "There was a, uh, big meteor." He paused, looking at my blank expression. "Do you know what a meteor is?"

I shook my head.

"It's like a big rock. You know that rock you like to climb in the backyard? Even bigger than that. And it was way out in space, up beyond the sky. And one day it fell down and it crushed all the dinosaurs, and they couldn't be here anymore."

I am sure my eyes must have been bugging out of my head, I was so horrified. Rocks could just fall from the sky? For no reason? Rocks the size of the one in our backyard, which was taller than I was and easily the biggest rock I ha seen with my own eyes? Surely not.

"Meters just fall out of the sky? That can't just happen!"

"Mete-ors, Craig, and sometimes it does. Not very often, but sometimes. And they're not always that big, sometimes they're quite a bit smaller and they only break a few things. Once in a while they hit people."

"Is that what happened to Laura?" I asked the question without thinking, without hesitating. Laura had been gone for two months, and no one would tell me what happened. A friendly police officer had told me that I wouldn't be seeing my sister again, probably not for a while. If I asked mom where she went, her face got all red and her eyes got shiny and she would excuse herself with a wobbly voice to use the bathroom. When she came back, her nose and eyes were red and she would always be talking about something else. Sometimes she didn't even go to the bathroom at all, and I'd find her fifteen minutes later in Laura's room, holding a pillow or a doll or a book and crying.

My father breathed deeply, and I felt the rumble in his chest as he said, "No, Craig."

There was a pause.

"When is Laura coming home?"

"I don't know, Craig...I don't think she is."

I digested this briefly. On the one hand this wasn't so bad because Laura, at fourteen, was the most annoying person I knew. If she wasn't coming home, no one would steal my playing cards or mess with the ant farm I was trying to develop in the backyard. That would be ok.

But if Laura wasn't around, there was also no one around to give me hints when I got stuck on my stupid kindergarten math questions, and to play board games with me when I got bored.

"Can we go visit her?"

My dad didn't even hesitate. "No."

"What about on Sunday? You don't work on Sunday, and--"

"We can't go visit Laura," Dad said, his voice thick. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say.

"Can Uncle Kev come over on Sunday?" My dads brother came over every Sunday for a pot roast. Laura would make a salad and mom would make the roast, and Uncle Kev would bring brownies or ice cream for dessert. Over the past few months Dad had been making the salads, mom had been struggling through the pot roast, and Uncle Kevs desserts had been storebought. None of them were very good.

"No."

"Why not?"

Dad sighed. It was a long one, and he didn't speak right away when he had finished.

"I've been to have a talk with Uncle Kev," he finally said. "He won't be coming back either."

I was confused. "Why not?"

"We're not brothers anymore." I looked at Dad, wide-eyed with disbelief.

"So he's not my uncle anymore?"

Dad shook his head.

"That can just happen?"

"Sometimes, Craig. Sometimes it can."

I tried to process this, and found it impossible.

"Why?"

Dad pinched the bridge of his nose and scrunched his eyes shut. He took a slow breath, then drained the last few sips out of his glass. "You'll understand when you're older."

"But I wanna know now."

"Yeah, well. It's bedtime, kid." Dad kissed my head, then hooked a hand under each of my armpits and swung me to the floor. He ruffled my hair and nudged me in the direction of the stairs. "Go dream about dinosaurs." I went happily to bed and did, in fact, dream about dinosaurs.

It wasn't until my next dinosaur dream, almost two decades later, that I realized the extent of what my father had done that night. In my dream, a small Brachiosaurus was gathering ferns and mashing them together. I looked all the way up into the sky, where a great burning meteorite was descending. Looking back at the Brachiosaurus, I saw Laura. She stood in the undergrowth with her back to the sky, humming happily. I tried to shout, to grab her arm and warn her, but my hand only slipped through. I turned around and saw my father standing off to the side, sober and serious. He pointed up at the flames and said, "Sometimes that can just happen."

Just as the meteorite was about to strike, I jerked awake in a cold sweat. The night felt like it was spinning around me. Everything clicked. I understood. I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief--for my lost sister, for my mother and father, even for the uncle I once had. In many ways, I had lost all of them the night Laura never came home.

Rolling over, I buried my face into my pillow and cried.