“Jacqueline lives in an Airstream,” Meemaw explains for my benefit as she slurps down her own large glass of sangria. “She parks it in a friend’s backyard for most of the year, but she brings it with her when she comes to the cabin because someone doesn’t like having the dog sleep in the house.”

“I told her the dog is welcome to sleep in the garage.” Katherine bristles, and Meemaw comes back with another retort about millennials and their dogs.

“If Jacqueline had a child, you wouldn’t ask them to sleep in the garage!”

They continue back and forth, but my brain has lost the ability to track this conversation. It’s stuck on one word.

“An Airstream?” I ask when I finally find my voice.

“It’s actually really nice,” Andrew reassures me. “Kind of like a tiny home, but on wheels.”

I see her in the low light of memory, standing beside the shiny trailer in the snow.

“Your sister named Jacqueline lives in an Airstream?”

It’s—it’s a coincidence. It has to be. There is no other explanation. Except—

“Yes…”

“An Airstream?”

Andrew shakes his head. “Is this a cabin thing again?”

“Is she having a stroke?” Meemaw wonders.

“I’ve had a stroke,” Lovey throws in. “This ain’t it.”

It feels like a stroke. This feeling of numbness creeping down my arms, this tightness in my chest, this tingle around my skull as realization competes with reason. He has a sister named Jacqueline who lives in an Airstream—

“She’s here,” Katherine announces, though I can barely hear anything over the blood roaring in my ears. A second later, an Australian cattle dog bursts into the room, nails skittering across the hardwood floor as he makes a beeline for my crotch.

“Paul Hollywood, no!” Andrew scolds. “Down.”

The dog looks up at me with his tongue lolling sideways out of his mouth, piercing blue eyes amidst tufts of gray fur. He stands on his back legs to try to make a play for my face, his tongue licking my throat instead.

And fuck. It’s not a coincidence.

I know this dog, just like I know the woman who bounds through the back door into the house with equal doglike energy. She’s wearing rubber-soled work boots, loose jeans, a red-and-brown flannel, and that coat. That same impractical-for-winter-snow khaki coat. The one that smelled like freshly baked bread.

I don’t have to speculate about how I would draw her. I’ve drawn her a hundred times in the past year, and now she’s here. Not on a napkin sketch, but in 3-D and flesh. At the Kim-Prescott family cabin.

My brain trips and falls over the how and why and for the love of God of it all.

“Jack!” Meemaw cries as her granddaughter pounces, landing a kiss on her cheek. “So happy you could make it this year, sweetheart.”

It’s Jack.

Jacqueline.

Jacqueline Kim-Prescott, apparently.