“Nah,” he whispers, “I love you so much. The grief, it … I’d been drinking and I missed you and I’ve been losing my mind. I know you have, too. Like way more than me. But I swear, this is not … it’s not me. I know that sounds like an excuse. It’s not. But, please. Please. Don’t be mad at Mae. I begged her not to tell you and she only agreed because she knows us, knows what we are. I ended it. Got my head on straight. I promise I will never fuck up like this again.” He pulls me toward him, and he is so shattered that I forget to push him away. “You’re my family. From day one, I told you that. I know if your dad were here he’d kick my ass, and I wish he could because I deserve it—”

And that. That does it.

“If my dad were here?” I look at him. Mae. Nate. Coconspirators. Liars. Betrayers. Can’t fucking trust anyone. “If my dad were here, he’d be telling you he understood, Micah. You want to know why?”

“Hannah…” Drew says, soft. Giving me an out, a chance to do right by the miracle.

I don’t take it.

This wound: It’s for me. And for my mom.

“Because. He was just. Like. You.”

I turn to Mae. I hate her right now. Knowing, all this time what Micah was doing to me, keeping it from me on the train, at the dinner table, in the bathroom brushing our teeth. Knowing about it and letting me stay with him. Letting me trust someone who was hurting me so bad. How could she? How could she let me stay with him?

“Dad was cheating on Mom. For over a year. With his research assistant. Rebecca Chen. Who is pregnant right now with his baby. Dad was going to leave Mom, Mae. As soon as we graduated. He was going to leave her. All of us.”

And then I say the thing that took me, the day after we got the call from the Red Cross, to where the weirdos at Harvard Square hang out. The strung-out ones. With pills. I say the thing that hollows me out every morning. Every night.

“And maybe that’s why she was alone. In the grave. Maybe he didn’t try to save her.”

Mae has been holding an apple. All this time. It falls out of her hand. Thunks to the ground. Rolls. She stares. Through me. Through … everything. She is not here.

I didn’t know there was a flame blazing in my sister until it burned out.

“Mae.” I say her name, a choke. A sob.

She just stares and stares. Ben wraps his arms around her, but her body doesn’t move. Her eyes don’t move.

She is not here.

I don’t know where she went.

But she’s gone.