Dolly was living in New York, working at an auction house. I wrote her long letters narrating the history of our mother’s life as I remembered it. I flew up one weekend on the pretext of visiting the museums and galleries and took her out to lunch at a bistro on the Upper West Side, near her apartment building. She had grown lean and leggy, like Vanessa, but with my mother’s chestnut hair and eyes. She spent most of our time together looking at her phone. But she met me, and she didn’t tell me to fuck off and get out of her life. I left feeling more hope than regret.

Another year passed. I never tried to reach Vanessa and had stopped wishing she would try to reach me. So the day she called, the sound of her voice hit me with the same force I’d have felt if it had been my mother’s.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Home,” she said.

The last time I’d seen her, she was on television, next to Dan Baird when he announced his intention to run for Arch’s vacated Senate seat. She stood there looking as stoic and serene as Baird, who had every reason to spit on Arch’s grave, talked about the tragic loss of such a promising public servant and vowed to continue the good work Arch had begun for the country and for the people of Tennessee.

The next morning, I drove across Nashville and into Belle Meade. A fog had settled overnight across Middle Tennessee, thinning with the rising sun into a misty vapor. I turned off West End, onto the Boulevard, and steered up the long pebbled driveway. She met me at the front door.

For years, I had seen Vanessa only on screens and in photographs, where she looked more or less unchanged by time. Face-to-face, I could see the lines around her eyes, worn deeper, no doubt, by sadness as much as by the years. This is not to say that she was not as lovely as ever, or that I did not feel seized by the old yearning. I mention it only to observe that those little signs, visible only at close range, reminded me how far removed we were from that first sun-drenched afternoon by the pool, and that heartbroken drive on the Natchez Trace, and that last night when she arrived at my house unannounced and I followed her back to my bedroom.

“You’re out of uniform,” she said.

“That’s over now,” I said. “Trying to get used to being a civilian again.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll have one less thing to worry about.”

“You worry about me?”

“I never stopped worrying about you.”

Behind her, the walls of the great room were bare, much of the furniture gone, the rest draped with white covers.