“I saw the UConn brochure in the stack of mail on your table,” she says, and she hesitates. “I just…I just want you to promise me that if you want to go somewhere else you’ll tell me.” Her voice is smaller than it usually is and there’s worry written in the lines of her forehead.

“I don’t understand,” I say, now unsure myself, and repeat the familiar phrase we’ve said in some version since the beginning of ninth grade. “It’s close enough to come home on the weekends and far enough to escape the watchful eye of the Christopher. Basically perfect.” I study her. We’ve always said we would go to UConn together. Always.

“No. I know. I mean…” She looks momentarily toward the buzzing woods as though they might help her make her point.

And suddenly it dawns on me why she might be asking. “Wait…do you want to go somewhere else?” I say, my heart picking up speed, bracing for the possibility that on this lazy mundane summer afternoon, my best friend might tell me she’s leaving.

“No!” she says, the word exploding from her mouth. “Don’t even think it!”

“You thought it about me,” I fire back, and it takes me a moment to rebound from the adrenaline rush.

For a second we’re both quiet, breathing in the soupy air, which smells like grass and cows, our chests rising and falling a little faster.

“You’re serious,” I say. “You’re not just randomly asking me a question.” I stare at Emily and it’s obvious she is. “Something happened, didn’t it? What happened, Emily?” I say her name with enough emphasis that she huffs.

“The Christopher,” she says like a deflating balloon.

I pull back to look at her, even though I don’t need to. “My dad?” I say, my words full of disbelief. “My dad, who always tells us that we’re saving him a lot of money because now he won’t need to fly to California every weekend to check on us? That dad?”

Emily presses her lips together.

“You know I’m going to get it out of you one way or another,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my forearm. “You might as well just tell me.”

Emily shakes her head, but not like she’s telling me no, like she’s unsure. “I don’t know. It was weird. He saw me looking at the brochure and he asked me if it was actually my first choice. I told him of course it was, but he just stood there with one of his all-knowing stares. Then he asked if I would go there even if you weren’t here.”