The Brothers

Johannesburg, 1964. Patrick was the first to say it out loud. They were sitting in the kitchen of the Turffontein house — all four of them, which almost never happened — and the tin trunk was open on the table between them.

It had been eighteen years since the letter arrived. Eighteen years since their mother had sat on the front step and read two words in their grandfather's handwriting. She had never gone back to Shannon after that. She had married. She had moved to Johannesburg. She had raised four sons and never once stopped believing the trail was real.