“I just want to know how I can do better next time,” I whispered, yawning, too.

Colette didn’t answer for a few seconds. I thought she’d fallen asleep, or maybe I had. Then she whispered groggily, “If you tell the story again, call him Billy.”

chapter 1

Almost one year later, I returned to the cabin in Wyoming. It looked and smelled exactly the same, but everything was different.

Colette had been dead for two and a half months.

“Keep it moving,” Kennedy said in her Boston accent, so it sounded like mah-ving to me. She bumped my shoulder with her duffel bag, trying to get around me in the cramped cabin entryway. “God, cousin, you’re like a rock in a river.” Rivah.

“Sorry,” I murmured, my vocal cords hardly working, taking a step toward the bench that had dirty hiking boots lined up under it, but not setting down my own bag. I’d been pretty much silent during the two-hour solo plane ride from Washington to Salt Lake City and the four-hour rental car ride with my relatives from Salt Lake City to Pinedale.

Frankie had refused to come back, so that meant my mom and her boyfriend, Charles, stayed home, too. I’d been given a choice: go alone—with my Boston relatives, of course—or spend the summer at home.

Here, I’d go to art camp with strangers and try not to annoy my cousin.

There, I’d see the world moving on without Colette firsthand.

That hadn’t really been a choice to me.

“I’ll carry your bag up, Tess,” Uncle Bran said, appearing behind me. “I know you don’t like the stairs.”

I was very aware of the weight being lifted off my right shoulder as Bran took the bag. I felt like it’d been keeping me from floating away. I sort of wanted it back.

“Thanks,” I said weakly. He was already halfway up.

Aunt Maureen tiptoed through the door with five-year-old Kane sleeping in her arms. She lovingly smiled at me before walking down the hallway to put Kane in bed.

“Tess?”

Now Aunt Maureen was standing by the old compact fridge, without Kane, looking at me expectantly. I guess I’d zoned out; who knows for how long.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“I asked if you wanted something to drink.”

She and Uncle Bran didn’t have Boston accents, since they weren’t raised there; only their kids did. It was kind of weird.

Aunt Maureen waited patiently for me to answer. I thought about how she was a slightly younger, more put-together version of my mom. Her short-sleeved blue button-down shirt and tan shorts somehow weren’t even wrinkled from traveling all day. But my mom had waved me goodbye this morning in dirty sweats and a messy bun.

“I’ll get some water,” I said.

“I’ll get it for you,” Aunt Maureen said, motioning me over. “Take a seat.”