She walked across the room and picked up a photo of the three of us—Ari, me, and your grandma. “What if it’s her spirit?” she asked me. “You know how there are those stories about past lives and recycled souls? What if that baby has Mom’s soul?”

I looked at her in shock. “How could you say that to me?” I asked her, my eyes brimming with tears. “Now if I decide to do anything other than raise this baby myself, I’ll be thinking about that.”

I got up and grabbed my coat.

“Wait,” Ari said. “Em, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that out loud. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—it was a thought. A fleeting thought.”

“Just forget it,” I said; my tears were full of anger and disappointment and guilt. I opened the door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I scanned the yard. I didn’t really have a plan. And then my eyes landed on the oak tree on the other side of the yard. “My old tree house,” I said. “Don’t follow me.” It was somewhere I went often as a kid when I needed to be alone. I’d tell her not to follow me then, too.

I could see my breath making mist in the cold air as I walked quickly across the lawn and climbed up the broken ladder to the house my father built when I was eight years old. I did my homework in there, ate my after-school snacks, had my first kiss at twelve with one of our neighbors, Jared Stewart.

Once I got inside, I saw what a mess it had become. Dead leaves, dead bugs, dirt. I used my gloved hands to sweep what I could out the windows and entry, and then leaned back against the wall where I’d carved ES loves JS, after Jared’s and my first kiss. We kissed a lot more after that—for two years, until I didn’t want to kiss him anymore. Or anyone. I wanted to focus on my mom and on school and on choir and that was it. Letting too many people in made everything seem worse, seeing their pity, their sympathy. I couldn’t handle it.

I looked for something sharp in the tree house and found the bottom point of an acorn that must’ve blown in from higher up in the tree. With it, I scratched ES loves RB into the soft wood next to the first inscription.

Soon after, I heard someone climbing up the ladder of the tree house. “I said leave me alone, Ari,” I yelled.

“It’s me!” your dad answered.

“Oh,” I said. “You can come in.”

He laughed as his head popped into view. “Thank you for the audience, my queen.”

I smiled, too.

“What happened with Ari?” he asked. “She feels really bad.”