“Well…you know.” Clara sighed. “Why didn’t we start talking about Mom and Dad until this year?”

It was Sawyer’s turn to sigh. “Because talking about this stuff is hard.”

“But marginally easier in a moving vehicle!” Clara said with exaggerated cheer.

Sawyer turned around in his seat and speared Eve with a severe look. “Did you know about this?”

Her wince must have answered for her. He turned back to Clara. “I hope I’m not the last to know because you thought I would react poorly.”

“No, no. I don’t know. I just…let it get away from me. I…didn’t want to lose anyone else.” Her voice had gone high. Eve recognized it as a sign that she was about to cry, so Sawyer must, too. “I can’t lose you.”

“That’s right,” he said vehemently. “You can’t lose me.”

Clara glanced over, and the siblings shared a long look before Sawyer snapped his fingers at the windshield, indicating that he wanted Clara to pay attention to the road. Once she had done so, he said, with the same intense tone, “You think you’re rid of me because you’re in school in Toronto, but I’m going to be texting your ass constantly. And they’d better have some kind of fall parents’ night or something or I’m gonna declare my own. You are never”—his voice cracked—“getting rid of me.”

Clara emitted a single sob but got herself under control quickly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“No.” Sawyer shook his head. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t know this big thing about you. I should have seen it.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“Yes, I should have.” He paused. Eve couldn’t see his face, but he tilted his head like he was thinking about something really hard. “I totally should have.”

Clara met Eve’s eyes in the mirror again, but this time she looked more at ease. “Eve said you were going to go through a slideshow of the past to try to see what you’d missed.”

Sawyer snorted. “Well, Eve doesn’t know everything.” He turned, and there was both annoyance and affection in his expression. It felt like they’d all come through something together.

“She kind of does know everything,” Clara said.

Sawyer rolled his eyes even as affection won out over annoyance and faced forward. After a few moments, he said, “Yeah, she kind of does.”

They rode in silence for a while, and as they turned off the Bluewater Highway onto a country road, they passed fields of corn ready to harvest.

“What did you mean ‘a thing’?” Sawyer suddenly asked.

“What?

“You said you thought you had ‘a thing’ with Lily Somebody—who I’ve never even heard of, by the way.”