Kimmy and Alex spoke on the phone often—in fact, it seemed Alex was the only person Kimmy had much interest in talking to at all. The two of them also kept in close touch through letters written in a secret code they developed. At the girls’ request, Lisa and Poppy planned a weekend in October when they could meet up at a cabin in Shenandoah National Park. Poppy wondered if they should bring the husbands, and Ryan if he had any interest, and Lisa quickly responded that she thought just the girls would be best.

Kimmy changed. It was hard to watch. Terrible dreams woke her so often throughout the night that she was dark and sluggish and sometimes disoriented during the day. Other times, it wasn’t dreams that woke her but constant racing thoughts that prevented her from falling asleep at all. A therapist suggested: “Have you tried turning your thoughts off at night? Picturing them in a box and closing the lid? Or cutting each thought off, stopping it in its tracks before it goes anywhere?”

Kimmy thought this was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

She misplaced her set of Lip Smackers and made no effort to replace them. There was no joy at her first period. No celebration when she got braces to fix the rabbit teeth, or when she got the braces taken off two years later, when people commented in hushed and pained tones about how much she looked like Rae. Kimmy grew increasingly hostile and cynical to many who tried to help. She rolled her eyes and scoffed openly when people spoke of Rae waiting for them in heaven or receiving signs from Rae in a butterfly or a bird, or when therapists referred to the five stages of grief and the possibility that Kimmy had gotten tripped up somewhere between denial and anger. Kimmy felt so far from the person she was before Fripp Island that sometimes it seemed to her that she was operating on a completely different plane of existence, like the universe had performed some sort of uncanny swap.

When Kimmy thought back on the days at Fripp Island, her memories were cloudy and indistinct. One time not long after Rae’s death, in an attempt to share some happy family memories at a therapist’s recommendation, Lisa said to Kimmy, “Remember how we all played Crazy Eights together? Or when you made caramel corn?” Kimmy stared at her mother blankly and said, “Huh?” There was no caramel corn in Kimmy’s memories, no Crazy Eights. There were no facts from those days, from that house on Fripp Island, only feelings.

Alex remained her closest confidante as Kimmy’s school friends fell away. Among one another, Kimmy’s former friends said that Kimmy had gotten quiet and weird and sometimes mean. When their attempts to engage her fell flat, they took it personally and withdrew. Alex was the only one who seemed willing to accept who Kimmy had become after her sister’s death, rather than trying to cajole her into the person she was before. She was unbothered by Kimmy’s silent spells and her sharp tongue.