I’ve always liked Nora. She’s got Mom’s brown eyes, like good soil in the garden. When the Karalis women cry, their skin gets all blotchy. Aunt Nora and Hannah look like checkered picnic blankets right now. It’s Hannah who really looks like my mother. Except for the eyes—she has Dad’s eyes. So green. Sometimes, if I look quickly, I could swear she’s Mom, back from the bottom of the ocean.

Uncle Tony is Boston Italian, the odd one out, with his thick North End accent and insistence on lasagna at Thanksgiving. He’s stocky and usually jovial, but he doesn’t muster up a fake smile now, and I really love that about him. Nate is a sophomore at MIT. Nah gets annoyed with us sometimes, when we’re together. Says no one can get a word in unless they understand quantum mechanics. That is probably true.

“Hey, Buzz,” he says, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “Fucking sucks.”

Nate’s been calling me Buzz—after Buzz Lightyear, of course—since we were kids. My parents picked up the habit, too. I hope Nate calls me this forever, for all the times they can’t.

“Yes,” I say. “It does.”

He’s wearing skinny jeans and a blouse trimmed with lace and pearl buttons, and his dark brown eyes stand out even more with his mascara.

“I hope your mascara’s waterproof,” Hannah says.

“Of course.” He picks up her hand and studies her nails. I never paint mine, but she always has a different color. “I’m giving you a mani when we get home.”

“Don’t you know chipped polish is all the rage here in LA?”

“Ah.” He nods sagely. “Of course. Us Bostonians are so provincial, you know.”

I appreciate Nate for not being saccharine or using a grief voice. It is an actual tone of voice I am becoming familiar with. Hushed, underscored by a pitying whine.

Hannah starts to cry. I don’t know why, maybe because Nate isn’t being grief-strange. My cousin drops his arm from around my shoulders and places his palms on her cheeks.

“You are going to be okay. Not for a long time, but someday,” he murmurs, the way you speak to a spooked horse, an agitated dog.

Nate’s sister died when we were little, so he knows. I remember how awful it was, watching Annie waste away at Boston Children’s, her little head shaved, the cancer eating through her day by day.

Nah swallows. “Promise?”

He holds up a pinkie and hooks hers with it. “Promise.”

“This family has such shitty fucking luck, I can’t even,” Nah says.