Suddenly Sarah could hardly stand. Though Kiki and Arman had seen plenty of photos and videos of Leda over the years, they had last seen her in person as an animated eight-year-old who still had some baby teeth. Though perhaps Leda had video-chatted with Kiki a few times on Leda’s laptop when she was in ninth or tenth grade, Kiki and Arman had last heard her voice—face-to-face—as a child’s voice, not the scratchy, admittedly sexy, sometimes plaintive murmur that had perhaps started as a teenage affectation but had long since become an intractable feature. Just as her hair—the golden cascade of girls’ drawings—would always be a part of her, no matter how many times she’d cut it off. And her eyes would remain hazel and feline, which was particularly ironic given how much she hated cats. Kiki and Arman’s cat Twyla used to attempt a rub against little Leda’s leg, and she’d run inside, begging Kiki or Arman to shoo it away.

Mom, she had yelled, that day on the beach, in the wind, gripping Sarah’s shoulders as if she might start shaking her. You’ve got to stop crying.

Sarah leaned on the car for a moment. “I’m okay,” she assured Matthew, anticipating his concern. “I just need a second.” She looked up at the second floor, where lace curtains were drawn closed.

“Does anything hurt?”

“Oh, you know,” she said flippantly, “everything.”

“Seriously?”

Her hands stung slightly, right where she’d broken her fall. The shadow beneath her left eye was just now darkening into a bruise and pulsed now and then. She was most aware of the cut on the bridge of her nose. “No, no. Just a little vain.”

“Come on. You look fine.”

One of her least favorite expressions: you look fine. This was undoubtedly adolescent, but she’d rather look wretched. Who’s ever comforted by fine? Wrecked or stunning—was that too much to ask? And, okay, to Arman and Kiki she’d appear not only duly battered by time, but also actually battered. Maybe it was better this way; there’d be no pretending. She looked up the driveway’s slight incline at the yellow-painted door.