“Right. I know. Listen to me. She’d been messing up at school, chatting with boys on her phone. What’s typical today,” she remarks, “is a nightmare for any parent. So they forbid her to go out. She was mad about that. When that didn’t work, they took away her phone.”

“That’s like cutting off a teenager’s arm,” I say.

She nods. “Or their brain.”

My eyes glance back to the photograph and I ask her to continue. She tells me how the police ruled it accidental and she kind of went along with it, said she didn’t want to make a big thing of it at the time because she didn’t want anyone to think badly of Carrie.

She stops, takes another tissue.

It was the week after the memorial service at Sunset Memorial Park in Bellevue, she tells me. Laurna Volkmann directed a Guatemalan moving crew to take some things to storage. Her sister’s house was a large one, stuffed with things that became a love/hate test for Laurna. She’d watched the Japanese expert on a TV show explain how to edit down the things that do nothing for you. That even make one anxious.

As the young men helped her ready the house for painting and staging, Laurna said, so many of the things she had elected to keep were items that had a strong connection to her sister. A pair of childhood sleds she and Carrie had used every winter even when there was only a dusting over the hillsides by their house. Pictures from a family trip to Six Flags four years ago. She also found some belongings of Hudson’s, that were precious and related to his family. As he hadn’t any family that she could remember at that time, she put all of those in a box and then found her way to Ellie’s bedroom.

Her niece’s room was beginning to show the stirrings of the transition from teen to adult. The last time she’d been there, it had been painted French Poodle Pink. And while Laurna adored the color, it was almost too much, even for her. Now, the pink was gone for a pale gray hue. So was the shelving that had once held up a collection of plush animals. In its place were books and boys. One wall was plastered with images of celebrities and Abercrombie boys, their pouty lips and eyes aimed at her.

Laurna shifted her gaze to the shabby chic desk. An open book sat just as Ellie had left it. Laurna sat still for the longest time, she told me, her home movies playing in her mind. It was like she was sleepwalking or something. Foggy. Sad. In need of another stiff drink.