“Yeah. I mean, she doesn’t know what it’s like to be me, but she knows a lot of the reasons I am me.”

“Do you think about her? Even when she’s away at college?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“I think about Sonia a lot. But I don’t think she thinks about me too much.”

He didn’t say anything right away.

“Bea—it’s not the same. I mean, you guys haven’t known each other that long.”

“We’re not really going to be sisters, you mean.”

He looked down. “I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you meant.”

Angus is probably the only person I never get mad at. But I was almost mad.

Jesse

While we dried dishes that night, I told Sheila about Floo-floo. “I actually used to think Floo-floo was kind of ugly,” I told her. “But now that I know him, I can’t believe I ever thought that. Now that I know him, he’s beautiful.”

Sheila gave me a long look. Then she pulled me in for a hug and said, “I love you, Bea.” Sheila is like the opposite of Angus’s mom.

Mom had made plans to go out because Monday is usually a Dad night, but Dad was in Minnesota. Jesse had to work at the restaurant. So Sheila had come over to Mom’s to be with me.

“Can I ask you something?” I said when we were on the couch. Sheila was flipping channels.

“Always.”

“How do you know for sure that Mission doesn’t want to come to the wedding? Did you even ask him?” I was thinking that maybe I should tell Sheila about Mission’s invitation. In case his RSVP card showed up in the mail.

She put down the remote and slapped her legs. “That’s a big question.”

I waited.

She said, “I’d have to start way back, a long time ago.”

Then she stopped, and I knew she was deciding how much to say. I waited.

“Fifteen years ago, about a month before he was supposed to get married to Sonia’s mom, Jesse told us he was gay. He told all of us together at the kitchen table—me, our parents, and Mission. Jesse asked us for help.”

“What kind of help?”

“We all knew Ellie—that’s Sonia’s mom—real well, because Jesse and Ellie were high-school sweethearts. In our town, high-school sweethearts get married all the time. It’s not like New York City. Ellie felt like part of the family, and now Jesse was telling us he couldn’t marry her. It wasn’t fair, he said, to her or to him. But he needed to know we would still be there, after. He needed…I think he just needed us to say it. That we would still be there for him, after he broke it off.”

“What happened?”