Emily started laughing and Ari looked at her quizzically until she started laughing, too, realizing belatedly why someone might find vacuum-packed clothing funny. It was often like that with Ari. It took her a moment to get out of her own brain, to switch her point of view, but when she did, she could laugh at herself. Or understand why something she said might have been hurtful. Emily often wished Ari were able to do that before she said the hurtful thing, but at least she understood afterward.

Arielle sat down on the couch and started un-vacuum-packing the clothes so Emily could see what was there.

“Here,” Emily said, as she went into the kitchen. “I made parmesan monkey bread and tomato sauce.”

Her sister smiled at the dish. It was something their mom used to make, though as she got sicker, she needed their help to open the jars and eventually to roll the balls of dough in grated parmesan cheese. Now that she was pregnant, Emily found herself thinking about her mom even more often.

“She would’ve been so excited,” Ari said, pulling off a section of the bread to dip in sauce. Emily didn’t have to ask who she meant.

“I know,” she said. “There’s so much I wish I could ask her.”

Ari sighed. “I know it’s not the same, but you can always ask me.”

Emily nodded. Her sister wasn’t a replacement, but for the past sixteen years she’d been the next best thing.

“How are you feeling?” Ari asked her.

“Pretty good, actually,” Emily said. “Just really emotional.”

“Does it make you think . . . ?” Ari didn’t finish the sentence. The two of them hardly ever had to.

“Yeah,” Emily said, answering what her sister hadn’t needed to ask. “All the time.”

viii

Your father was playing music everywhere he could, sometimes by himself, and sometimes with James or Tony or me or all of us together. It was his goal, his plan after graduation: to get a record deal, to perform all over the world, to share his music with everyone he could. We didn’t talk much about “after”—after he graduated, when I would have one more year to go. In the meantime, he’d become a favorite at a local coffee shop and had started writing his own songs. Songs about the dreams he had, the love he felt—for me, for music, for family, for life. In the song he wrote about me called “Queen of All the Keys” he sang about how he loved to watch me play piano. Honestly, even then I thought it was a little silly. His lyrics were mediocre at best. But the melody was beautiful. And whenever I walked into the coffee shop, everyone there called me the queen. To play along, I started braiding my hair into a crown around my head when we performed together. The coffee shop fans loved it.