Sliding away from me without a word, she lay on her stomach and went to sleep.

AT MIDNIGHT, on New Year’s Eve, the ballroom of the country club seemed as loud and crowded as Times Square. Balloons dropped from the ceiling; couples with cheeks puffed out like Louis Armstrong in mid-solo were blowing noisemakers; and the band played “Auld Lang Syne” before segueing into a souped-up, earsplitting rendition of “Let’s Twist Again.” Glenna, recovered from last night’s pique, gave me a long, sweet kiss; Charlie, enfolding me in a bear hug, shouted, “This is gonna be a great year. Alex’s coming home, and we’re gonna make you a Celtics fan”; and Elaine, after kissing her husband, patted my cheek and pulled Glenna onto the dance floor, where both of them, slender and lithesome in their long, shimmery dresses, kicked off their heels and started twisting with the exuberance of two kids on American Bandstand.

I watched them dance until the other gyrating couples blocked my view, and then I wandered out to the lounge to escape the noise. I’d been jittery all night, checking my iPhone screen for any signs of voice mails or text messages even though I’d been keeping the phone in my shirt pocket so I could feel it vibrate if anyone tried to contact me. The lounge had three glass walls overlooking the snowy fairways and greens of the golf course, and I stood looking at the snow falling heavy and fast through the wide, bright arc of the outdoor lights, while fear and anger, those birds of a feather, fluttered in my chest.

The band had finished running through a Motown medley when I saw Elaine exit the ballroom. I walked over to her.

Elaine said, “You want to get going?”

“Soon.”

“You should bring Glenna to visit again.”

“We’ll see.”

“Listen to your big sister. People change, Gordie.”

“You taking bets on that?”

“My work makes me an optimist,” she said.

“Mine didn’t.”

Elaine was eyeing me with the professional gaze I assumed she ordinarily reserved for her clients—curious, compassionate, and all-fucking-knowing.

“I gotta tell ya, Elaine. You and Mom both had a lot of advice for me about Glenna.”

“How’d Mom do?”

“A bull’s-eye.”

“I’m as good a shot as Mom was,” Elaine said, planting a kiss on my cheek and heading for the ladies’ room.

Glenna was at our table, talking to Charlie. The band broke into “Since I Fell for You,” and I asked Glenna to dance.

Charlie said, “Don’t forget to bring her back,” and I chuckled, promising that I wouldn’t forget and thinking that my big sister never missed an angle.

Wedging into an open spot on the floor, I drew Glenna to me, and she rested her head on my shoulder. We were swaying to the mournful notes of the song when I said, “How’d my parents stand it? I was in that jungle for ten months. It must’ve killed my father.”

Glenna moved her head back to look at me. “High blood pressure, heart disease, and cigarettes killed your dad.”