“Nothing.” Colleen eased the papers from under Hallie’s bundles. “Just need to finish . . .”

“Bullshit.” Hallie took a sip of coffee and glared at her sister. “But right now I don’t care what you were talking about, even if it was me.” She sat at the table. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had a glazed look. Colleen had a vague sense her sister was seeing the river park and a red-haired woman.

“You okay?” Shane asked.

“The timeline.” Hallie’s words were robotic. “You know it’s not right.”

“It’s not.” Colleen glanced at her brother before turning back to her sister with a nod. “You’re right, Hallie. But I think that in the memory book we have to give Dad the timeline he’s always given us. It’s what he told us, so it’s what he believes and maybe that’s the best we can do.”

“The best we can do?” Hallie’s face seemed to come alive again, her cheeks flushed. “It damn well isn’t the best we can do. And you know that. You just don’t care.”

“Don’t care?” Colleen felt her voice rising and she checked it, spoke more softly. “I do care. I totally care. Listen, I found my baby book and it’s like I didn’t even exist for the first two months of my life. Of course I care. But the memory book is supposed to be for Dad, so he can look at it and see his life in some sort of narrative way, and if this is the narrative he told us, maybe that’s the one he wants to remember.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter what we want to remember,” Hallie said, “but what is true. Isn’t that what you want all of us to do? Face the truth?”

“No. I don’t know what I mean.” She glanced between brother and sister. “Have you ever wondered why we never visited Grandma and Granddad in Virginia? Or Rosie and Fred? I mean, I know we have a small family compared to most, but we never went to see them. They always came to us. We never visited Mother and Dad’s town. We never saw where they grew up. We never once visited.”

Hallie’s eyes flitted to the note cards, back to Colleen and then again to her brother. “I never thought about that. It was just the way it was.”

“Exactly.” Colleen exhaled. “Just the way it was.”

Shane lifted a folder from the table and then set it down again. “Maybe South Carolina was just more fun. It was Dad’s home. He didn’t like leaving it. We know that. Sometimes the most simple explanation is the right one.”

“And sometimes it’s not,” Hallie said. “Right, Lena?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”