Johnny blew out a blast of air. “I always thought the two of us were pretty much soul to soul, you know? Until we weren’t. It’s like you wake up every day and you have it all. But you forget that you have it. And then one day you don’t have it anymore. Bam. Blindsided.”

“It’s a shit ton of work,” Michael said, “but you can get it back.”

“Maybe two perfectly good people can stop fitting together,” Johnny said. “Maybe Kim was just the brave one who figured it out first.”

“So then you try to take what you learned to your next relationship,” I said. “Which is also a shit ton of work.”

“I’m scared to death of getting it wrong,” Johnny said. “And I hate myself for being afraid.”

“You’ll hate yourself more if you don’t even try,” I said softly.

“Yeah,” Billy Jr. said, “You have to go for it. If Dad were here, he’d be quoting Robert Frost and telling you that the only way out is through.”

“And then he’d try to convince us Robert Frost was Irish,” Carol said, “instead of Scottish and English. Or American.”

“We’re all afraid,” Christine said, “Even me sometimes. And nobody’s perfect—”

“Not even you,” Carol said. “Which, by the way, is like the world’s greatest understatement.”

“What I was going to say,” Christine said, “is that basically we’re all winging it.”

Johnny nodded. He started flapping his elbows like a bird. Tentatively at first, and then he picked up speed. The rest of us copied him, one after another, until we’d turned into a motley flock of seabirds flapping away in the dark in a minivan.

“Come on, bro, get your butt in there and make us proud,” Michael said.

Johnny opened his door, climbed out. When he ran his hand through the lock of hair that had fallen into his face, he looked just like our dad. My eyes teared up.

“He has a good swagger when he walks,” Carol said. “Like I might be a nice guy, but don’t mess with me.”

“Dad taught him that swagger,” Billy Jr. said. “Right after he taught it to me.”

Michael tapped me on the shoulder. “Open the door fast. I need to tell him something.”

I slid the door open. Michael jumped out.

In the blink of an eye, Michael opened the front door, hopped in the front seat, shut the door again and locked it.

“Ohmigod,” I said. “You can’t do that.”

“I just did,” Michael said.

“No way,” I said. “You know how it works—when somebody gets out, we rotate to the front. That means, I get shotgun, Christine gets my seat, you—”

Michael cupped his hand behind his ear. “Sorry, I don’t speak loser.”