But if the world must be made of car crashes and unspeaking books, let there at least be no guilt in companionship, no matter how brief. To quote Valerie, everything is silly because everything is temporary.

I know exactly what I want to do as I watch all of my own emotions play across Nolan’s face, an unfamiliar mirror. The urge is so strong, I don’t even need to summon the whales for the courage to do it.

“In the interest of our years of friendship and maintaining what matters, I’m going to hug you,” I announce, leaning across our beanbags for a sloppy two-armed affair that leaves my nose pressed into his sharp collarbone.

At first, he is as rigid as a board and as unforgiving as yesterday’s storm that struck our little patch of mattering. But his right arm comes around me and cradles my head to his shoulder, his left squishing down into the beanbag to rest against my back, and we’re locked in an embrace that heats me up from the inside with relief. In his arms, I can feel what he doesn’t say, the guilt that he could have saved them. He is a co-sufferer, a co-rememberer.

When we break apart, Nolan looks at me like I’m the sun that can soak up all his puddles of grief.

“I’ll tell you,” he says. “I’ll tell you what Jenna said … if you still want to know.”

This is what I came for. The whole reason I flew to Michigan, leaving everything I know behind. And it’s being handed to me … by Nolan Endsley, no less.

I can’t make words come out of my mouth, but Nolan must see the answer in my eyes because he nods, inhaling all the air in the room.

“I was standing outside the Author Oasis,” he says on an exhale. “It was only a couple of conference rooms away from the public, but it had food and was mostly quiet, so that’s where I stayed while the other authors were on panels. Alex had gone to check on the sound system for my ‘big announcement’ session.”

“Why weren’t you scheduled for any panels?” I ask when he pauses to breathe. I swallow down the strange déjà vu at hearing myself ask what I’d wondered aloud to Jenna when I’d first seen the schedule.

“Alex made me do a panel once, at another event,” Nolan says. “At the end, all the audience questions were for me, about Orman.”

“So?” I ask.

“You say ‘So,’ until you remember there were five other very successful authors—all much older than me—on that same panel, who had to sit there and pretend not to mind.”

We are quiet as I imagine Nolan’s unease at being the most sought-after person in the room. Looking at his downturned head and thoughtful eyes, I can’t imagine him speaking in front of a group of people.