In my memory, Holly was stuck around fifteen. She was beautiful with her long dark hair and her big brown eyes, but she was also tough—athletic and strong. She was girly, gossipy, opinionated, bossy, and phone-obsessed. She had a Velcro wallet filled with dollar bills, and she’d shove it into her flea-market fringed purse along with her Carmex. I pictured her lying on her back, legs up, with the phone balanced on her feet, the spiral cord wrapping around her legs, the receiver held tight against her ear by crooking her shoulder. She’d hold a compact mirror in one hand and tweeze her eyebrows with the other.

After Becky died and my family moved, Holly and I shared a bedroom. In our room, she’d hung a poster with a shirtless male model, his chest shiny with oil, his jeans partially unzipped, his hand gripping a pull-up bar over his head, everything about the poster inappropriately old for a teenage girl. There was another poster of a famous bull terrier, Spuds the Budweiser Dog.

It was my room too, but I never hung a poster or made any of the decorative decisions. Holly was center of her world, and I was a tagalong, a pest, a snoop. She played TLC on her boom box and wore sweatpants with her name spelled on the butt. At one point, she divided our room, stapling a blanket to the ceiling so she wouldn’t have to look at me.

This older, rundown version of Holly pushed the screen open and marched out with a Tupperware bowl in her hand. She set the Half N Half in the Tupperware on the asphalt. The neck of a liquor bottle peeked out of her other bag. Was it vodka? Like mother, like daughter?

Holly walked down the driveway with her hands on her hips.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, I thought I was seeing a ghost. You look just like Mom.”

Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Mom used to say that.

I said nothing.

“Holy shit, Heather,” she said, her expression caught between pissy and delighted. “I thought you were dead.”

She lurched forward a step, then pulled herself back. Like I was a cute dog, and she instinctively wanted to pet me, to hug me, but reconsidered, reminding herself that even friendly-looking dogs can bite off your finger. She stood close, inspecting me like a strict grandmother inspects a child for dirt behind their ears. Hands on hips, looking at my skin, my clothes, and not being discreet.

Her eyes were bright and watery, warm and full of life, but the rest of her face was haggard, unplucked, and without makeup.

“I’m not dead.”

“No shit.” She smiled, not unwarmly. “I’d invite you in, but Bruce, my husband, well, guests make him nervous. He’s recovering. It’s a long story. But, listen, sit in the garage with me.” She could see my hesitancy. “Just for a couple minutes.”