“Fine, thank you,” I try. “How are the kids?”

“They’re driving me fucking crazy!”

Something shatters in the background, then screaming.

WE MAKE LOVE AND IN THE MORNING, WE eat cake for breakfast. His mouth is full of frosting. I taste it later when we kiss goodbye.

ALONE, I STARE OUT OF THE WINDOW AT the lake. I am dazed again. I climb back into my bed, bask in the fading scents of our bodies.

The phone shrills.

“Hello?” I ask.

“Come home,” my mother says. “Your father’s heart is acting up.”

WE SAY GOODBYE AT THE TRAIN STATION. Henry kisses me deeply in the sunlight. My heart isn’t in it. My heart is already on the train home, gone.

ON THE TRAIN, THE LAND SHIFTS through the city and the wilderness. I see the skyscrapers then the dead body of a deer in the brush. A man snores next to me.

In my head, I hum aorta to calm my nerves.

The train pulls to a stop and I gather my bags. I climb down the silver steps and find my brother waiting for me with the red truck in the parking lot. He hugs me tight.

“Well, if it isn’t my long-lost sister,” he says, eyes watery and drawn, the joke landing false even as he makes it.

“What’s happening with Dad?” I ask.

“He said his heart felt tight this morning. He was having trouble with feeling anything in his arms.”

I nod and climb in the truck next to my brother. He navigates us over the land, we stay silent.

The house comes into view. The asphalt beneath my feet feels too soft. My brother pushes the front door open, and my mother is crumpled on the ground, sobbing.

“He’s gone,” she says between heaves, as if her heart is stopping and then restarting.

“Gone?” my brother shouts. “Gone? Why did you make me go pick her up?”

He collapses next to my mother.

THE WORLD WARPS AROUND ME, THE walls bulging and receding, the ground swelling and pulling back in waves. My head bobs slowly up and down, tears streaming down my face, grief obliterating everything inside of my body. My brother holds my mother as she shakes and sobs.

“Go be with him,” she calls. “I don’t want him to be alone, he shouldn’t be alone! Cassie, go be with him!”

I do not want to see my father, but I move up the stairs slowly in the strange air of the house. I push his bedroom door open, heart pounding so slowly it might be stopping.

DEATH HAS JUST BEEN HERE, I CAN SMELL it. My father’s body is in the bed, tucked into the covers. I don’t want to move closer, but I move closer. I don’t want to see him, but I must see him.