I hadn’t wanted to attend the fancy luncheon before I got Caro’s message, and I sure as hell wasn’t going after I saw it. When I read it again, I noticed a link at the bottom that said, Click for file access. I did and a web page opened up—with the words There are no files. I was caught in a hell loop. I didn’t know what to do, so I got back on the subway. Elmhurst, my neighborhood in Queens, was fifteen minutes from Manhattan by the express E train. I needed to be alone to think.

The train was mostly empty, and I flopped into a seat. My heart was racing, and my brain felt like it was spinning out of control. I took deep breaths from my diaphragm. It was funny—no one wanted to take the subway anymore, because they worried about inhaling germs—but there I was, sucking them all in to combat a panic attack. An old lady in a full plastic face shield gave me a death glare until I pulled on a paper mask. Face coverings weren’t mandatory anymore, but some people were ready to fight if you didn’t don a mask in close quarters.

I got off the train at Roosevelt and hopped on a local for two stops to Grand Avenue–Newtown. On a normal day, I would’ve walked, but on a normal day stilettos would not be tormenting my feet. I picked up a lychee drink at Kung Fu Tea and hobbled home.

Caro wasn’t snobby about my neighborhood—it was close to where we’d grown up—but she didn’t like me living in a basement. She’d offered to pay for a place in a building that, as she put it, would at least be a legal apartment. I was one of six tenants renting in a single-family home on Fifty-Fifth Avenue. I had a hot pot and minifridge instead of a kitchen, and there was a toilet and sink in my room, so it wasn’t the worst place I’d ever lived. I’d never been easy about asking for help, and Caro’s repeated offers always made me uncomfortable. I have money now, and what’s the point if I can’t do anything good with it? she liked to say. As I walked to the house, it hit me that my sister was the only person in the world who’d tried to make my life easier, and she was gone.