Hal Nightingale, the lanky-legged drifter I dated, who she and Dad loathed when he worked that one summer on our farm. His car was a Plymouth Duster with a stereo so distorted the rock music blared out as fuzz. I bet she thinks I married him. She never knew why I hung out with him, except she did know. She knew all the disappointment that pushed me there, all the towering blame.

“I left him a long time ago,” I say. “You do realize that was ten years ago?”

Her eyes widen for just a second. “Right. Good for you.” Liar, she’s thinking.

“Are you okay, Alex? Is there something you want to say?”

“Isn’t it a little bit late for that?” she says.

My plan isn’t working. “Look at this place,” I say, forcing my voice lighter. But I can’t help adding, “It’s nothing like you.”

“What does that mean?” She takes a long strand of her hair and sucks it, just like she did when she was little and someone was cornering her. We sit in silence for a minute, a stilted agony more than a family reunion. Eventually I point to the giant canvas photograph by the door, the only artwork in the whole loft.

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“It’s Chase. He’s a ski racer. Or he was. Now he works for Powderkeg, the local mountain.”

I stare at it. Who hangs a fuck-off-massive picture of himself on his own wall? Right on cue, Chase emerges from what must have been a thirty-second shower. Was he afraid to leave us alone for longer?

“I’ll just get dressed,” he says, “and then we can have some dinner. Take your time, no rush. You two must have a lot to catch up on.” He smiles broadly and heads into what looks like a walk-in closet.

When I shift my leg to move one knee over the other, the pointy glass corner of the coffee table stabs me at shin level. I wince. Chase is only half-right. Alex and I do have a lot to catch up on, except that we don’t. There’s so much to be said that we can’t say anything. I might not have seen my sister since she was fifteen, but I can already tell what her adult life has been, already sense the ease of it—while mine has been the opposite—and the lies behind it all, our whole family, including me, willfully forgotten. We were forged in the same fire, though. In the end, it will all come out.

“He’s upbeat, isn’t he, your husband? He seems to have a very sunny disposition.”