"Oh, jeez," he says quietly. "That's so awful. At least when my dad died I still had my mom around, if it was just me I dunno what I woulda done. Especially since I was just a baby."
Which is just it, isn't it. He would've been the one getting looked after by somebody, maybe Norm or Ethel even if they're half-siblings and not full-siblings, not the one doing the looking-after. That's what makes this so hard. It's a kind of stepping up he's done all the time in Korea, but it's so much different like this. So much harder; so much worse, and he doesn't quite know why.
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"Oh, jeez," he says quietly. "That's so awful. At least when my dad died I still had my mom around, if it was just me I dunno what I woulda done. Especially since I was just a baby."
Which is just it, isn't it. He would've been the one getting looked after by somebody, maybe Norm or Ethel even if they're half-siblings and not full-siblings, not the one doing the looking-after. That's what makes this so hard. It's a kind of stepping up he's done all the time in Korea, but it's so much different like this. So much harder; so much worse, and he doesn't quite know why.
He blurts out, "How'd you keep it all together?"