Maybe because it shared a glancing resemblance to the truth. Maybe it was because at the heart of it, no one really cared that much. And Ayanna had been able to tell the truth through all the questions: One minute she was there, the next gone. Yes, she had run to a neighborhood nearby, panicking. There was no one who her sister was afraid of or talked about. She hadn’t seemed distressed. Yes, there were things that worried her, things she was sometimes upset about, but that was normal. Ayanna could tell that the more times she answered those questions, the more people believed her and thought her sister had died by suicide. Here was another typical Midwestern family refusing to see how depressed one of them was. Here was another Black family who believed in prayer and sweating it out instead of pharmaceuticals. The state park had different areas that historically had seen deaths. Especially because no one could find Olivia’s cell phone. And a kid Olivia had known from school talked about how Olivia sometimes wrote sad poetry and then ripped it up when a draft was done. Another boy had said he and Olivia had been sort of talking but then he had gotten back with his ex-girlfriend and she had refused to talk to him because she was so upset.

If it were possible to talk to her mother in a way that wasn’t painful, Ayanna would ask her, Why did we have to lie?

If it were possible to talk to her father in a way that wasn’t painful, Ayanna would ask him, Why did you leave me alone with all this?

And the truth, as she understood it now, when they all were in the old living room together, and her mom was finally quiet after hours of alternating between crying and saying a range of things—should never have trusted you, why did this happen to her, you fucked up, I hate you, she was my child, how could I have ever let you into my life—was embossed forever on Ayanna’s brain. But she kept coming back to looking at her mother’s crumpled face, her father’s face, blank and eyes flat and bloodshot, and thinking, I have to remember this. It’s the last time we’ll be a family. The only times she felt like crying were when her mother said something cruel and Ayanna noticed her own head was automatically swiveling toward where Olivia liked to sit on the couch. The blanket there still smelled like Olivia and spilled coffee, but it could do nothing to make them all treat one another better.

Stephen had told her that what she said to Olivia was I’m sorry, I miss you, please come home, I’m sorry.