Those days when time seemed never-ending and the boardwalk stretched before us, I thought that, for sure, one day we would find our glittering heaven. We would be free of the problems of our home. We used to talk about it; how we'd buy a house together and live there together. Things would be different then, we said, Things would be great.

But it didn't work out that way. We grew up, had our hearts wowed and then broken, we never bought a house together because I went off to college and left him - the ultimate betrayal, though I had to go and I knew it. He became a stockbroker and sometimes drove to Boston in his black sports car. He would stay at the loft I lived in and we would talk about the old days, about the boardwalk. We had grown up, split by geography and perhaps fear, and perhaps too, for as much as we loved each other, we reminded each other of the hard times and so sometimes it was easy not to talk for a while. Pretend the past never happened - we were reminders to each other and we both knew it. .

I don't know exactly what was going on in his head that cold January day. I know he loved a woman who told him she loved him too but who was married to another man. She had wanted to marry Rich, but Rich wouldn't marry her, maybe out of fear that in doing so he would recreate our parents and the situation he had so longed to be free of. I know she said she loved him but 'couldn't be with' him. That for as much as she did love him, she loved marriage and security more, so she chose it over him.

I know that it was January and cold and there was hard crusted snow on the ground, uneven and dirty sidewalks, slippery with ice. I had walked them that morning on my way to work. It was a gray and cold day on that January 26th, and it was also the birthday of our other brother - fact that Richard, I think, had forgotten and lost in the noise in his head. A week prior, Rich quit his high-paying job at the Twin Towers in New York. I was told, after the fact, of course, that he had told his co-workers and his friends that he would be 'going away for a while.' He said his good-byes. He did not telephone me, and I often wonder why, though I think the answer has something to do with my knowledge of him. That I think I would have been able to tell from his tone that something was terribly wrong. That I would have talked him out of the one thing we had solemnly promised each other we would never do. Never, we said, would it be okay for either of us to 'check out,' make the 'final exit.' Maybe he had forgotten this promise, or maybe he just didn't care anymore because in a funny way, the only way for him to get better, the only way was Out.