“Duncan died?” His voice comes out thick with emotion. “Macy, why didn’t you tell me?”

Holy shit, that is an enormous question.

“I . . .” I start, and shake my head. “We weren’t in touch when it happened.”

Nausea rolls up from my stomach to my throat. What a cop-out. What an unbelievable evasion.

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Mace.”

I give myself three more seconds to look at him, and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life. And I’ve spent the last eleven years being angry and self-righteous. But at the end of the day, he tore a hole in us, and fate ripped it wide open.

“I’m going to go,” I say in an abrupt burst of awkward. “Okay?”

Before he can answer, I split, booking it down the street toward the BART station. The entire time I’m speed walking, and for the full rumbling trip back under the bay, I feel like he’s right there, behind me or in a seat in the next car down.

then

friday, october 11

fifteen years ago

The entire Petropoulos family was in their front yard when we pulled up in a moving van two months later. The van was only half-full because Dad and I had both thought at the rental counter that we’d have more to bring with us. But in the end, we’d bought only enough furniture from the consignment store to have somewhere to sleep, eat, and read, and not much else.

Dad called it “furniture kindling.” I didn’t get it.

Maybe I would have if I’d let myself think about it for a few seconds, but the only thought I had during the entire ninety-minute drive was that we were going to a house that Mom had never seen. Yes, she wanted us to do this, but she hadn’t actually picked it out, she hadn’t seen it. There was something so horribly sour about that reality. Dad still drove his rumbling old green Volvo. We still lived in the same house on Rose Street. Every piece of furniture inside had been there when Mom was alive. I had new clothes, but I always felt a little like Mom picked them out through some divine intervention when we shopped, because Dad had a way of bringing me the biggest, baggiest things, and invariably some sympathetic saleswoman would swoop in with an armload of more suitable clothing and a reassurance that, yes, this is what all the girls are wearing now, and, no, don’t worry, Mr. Sorensen.

Climbing from the van, I straightened my shirt over the waistband of my shorts and stared up at the crew now assembling on our gravelly driveway. I spotted Elliot first—the familiar face in the crowd. But around him were three other boys, and two smiling parents.