I felt oddly close to my dad, being bathed by this other father, thinking that I might have accidentally taken LSD. He’d often told me about the time he’d tried it, as a long-haired teen in the sixties—how he’d stupidly decided to drive, and how the road had gone vertical in front of the windshield. I dreamed about that a lot, driving and the road unexpectedly surging upward—and, instead of crashing, the car going with it. I’d never realized his connection to my dreams before. I’d always thought it had more to do with growing up near a mountain, remembering the terror I’d felt as a child sitting high in my dad’s truck, driving up and up along narrow curved roads with sharp overhangs, the guardrail looking far down outside my window, short and worthless.

That’s when I realized I had no idea where Lonnie had gone. Lonnie gone was not good, Lonnie was having trouble being alone in a room. I shot up in the bath, overwhelmed with worry. James put a hand on my cheek; his hand was big, enveloping my face. “What is it? Are you coming down already?”

“Where’s Lonnie?”

James’s hand cupped my breast. I didn’t know how long he’d been fondling me. “It’s okay,” he said.

“Where’s Lonnie?” I repeated. I felt like crying. William had a children’s book where an elephant, distraught over whether to share his ice cream with a friend, suddenly panics about where his friend is anyway—never mind the sharing. I felt like the sad, scared elephant. My eyes started to well, thinking of Lonnie alone somewhere, crying, and thinking of the sad elephant. I wanted to stop making these associations, but I couldn’t.

“It hit you really hard, huh?” James said, tilting his head, understanding.

“I have to find Lonnie,” I said, thrashing in the water.

“She’s here,” James said, smiling at me, moving his hands up and down my arms.

And she was, below me, on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. Her hair and dress had dried. She was staring up somewhere past me, at the ceiling. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. It was blank, terrible in its blankness, like the dead eyes of the woman who’d had LeRoi’s baby and then disappeared. I didn’t want to associate Lonnie with her. I didn’t want to associate Lonnie with anyone. Lonnie was different, singular, alone. Poor Lonnie, who had everything but was all alone.