“Nothing’s perfect, but…” He shrugs. “I guess they’re pretty good … I quit my job back in January because I was miserable, and they’ve been surprisingly supportive about it. My parents have always put more stress on the fact that their goal is for us to be experts in our field, rather than stressing a specific field they want us to be educated in, which is nice. My brother’s still deciding; he’s a legitimate scholar at this point. He has a PhD and he’s working on his law degree.”

“Wow.” I take a second to process this. “Hold up, so you’re not an accountant at all anymore?”

“I told you I’m trying out a bunch of new career paths,” he says calmly.

“Yeah, you did,” I say thoughtfully. “I guess I was distracted and haven’t really taken a second to think about how that would work. What have you done so far?”

Zarar reels in his line again and casts it back out. “I was an accountant after I graduated, then a personal trainer and a lifeguard, and now I’m teaching fishing and slacklining out here.”

I slump forward a bit. “Wow. That’s rad.”

He resituates himself next to me, shifting so he can make eye contact. “Can I rewind?”

“Rewind away.”

“Am I to infer from this conversation that you don’t like your sister?”

I swing my legs under the dock a few more times.

“I don’t really know my sister. Right now, she’s making it difficult to … connect at all. I don’t know if I like her, but I for sure love her. It’s built into my DNA or something.”

Zarar studies me, processing this. “You’re talking about her like she just came out of the womb and you haven’t gotten used to her existence yet,” he says.

I suck on a tooth. “Yeah well, I haven’t seen her since I was six, so we’re not exactly used to being around each other.” What am I doing?

He blinks at me a couple of times. “Sorry, explain this again.”

19. Angst and Reprocessing

SIRI

August 30, Sunday Afternoon

Colorado

Jamie’s late for our appointment with Donya.

She shows up on the doorstep at 1:04, frazzled and breathless like she sprinted here. I’m agitated and she’s barely walked into the room.

Why is it so hard for people to get somewhere at an appointed time?

Jamie’s wearing another pair of overalls today. Navy blue ones paired with a red plaid shirt. Like she’s cosplaying Old McDonald.

“Hey hey hey, I’m Jamie!” She smiles at Donya and shakes her hand. Her hair is tied up in a poofy fountain again, and there’s a two-by-two-inch piece of gauze taped above her left eye.