“Whatever happens, Ollie,” she said, gripping my hand firmly, “we’ll always be family. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, and I meant it with everything I had.
We survived that place side by side.
We kept that promise for years. Even when life pulled us to different cities, even when weeks got busy and phone calls got shorter, we never lost each other.
Nora became a waitress. I bounced between jobs until I found steady work at a secondhand bookstore. We stayed connected in the way people do when they’ve survived something together.
When she got pregnant, she called me, crying with joy. “Ollie, I’m having a baby. You’re going to be an uncle.”
I remember holding baby Leo for the first time when he was just hours old. He had tiny wrinkled fists, dark hair, and eyes that hadn’t quite figured out how to focus yet.
We kept that promise for years.
Nora looked exhausted and radiant all at once, and when she handed him to me, my heart broke open.
“Congratulations, Uncle Ollie,” she whispered. “You’re officially the coolest person in his life.”