It was a Friday, and I was on a date with some guy, drinking too much. I was neck-deep in oncology research that summer, trying to get an article published—to start medical school on the right foot—and, if I’m being honest, alcohol was a means of coping with stress long before that night. My mother always insisted, “Call if you can’t drive home, honey. We’ll come get you.” My parents were nearing Genesee Avenue when they were struck by a delivery van whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel after a long day of dropping off graduation wreaths. The force of the collision threw my parents over the elevated exit ramp from the highway and into the sloped valley below, where they died on impact. When they didn’t show, I requested a rideshare to get back. Passed out on my couch for five hours, too out of it to navigate the stairs to my bedroom. The call from the police woke me.

Officer Rudolph asked if there was anyone she could phone to keep me company, but I shook my head. No one would want to come once they learned the truth: I was the catalyst to this night. By asking my parents to save me from myself yet again—as they had in the past from happy hours after exams, from wine tastings, from friends’ birthday parties in Del Mar—I was the cause of their deaths. Work hard, play hard was the self-serving mantra I used to justify each binge—knowing they were always there for me, no matter the time of night or location.

“I blamed you for their deaths the last three years, after Auntie Mer told me,” Angela admits, her cheeks wet. “And if I’m being honest, I still haven’t forgiven you. I’m sorry, because that’s awful, but it’s true. The loss of them became the loss of all of you.”

“All this time,” I begin in a small voice, “I thought you were angry because I wouldn’t sell the house.”

“You could have. I meant it when I said I wanted it sold. Difficult memories are too much there, too concentrated.”

“Don’t you get it?” I shake my head. “I couldn’t—not without you coming home. I needed us to say goodbye to them together, since you didn’t come home for their funeral. I needed to tell you the truth in person.”

“Ready for the hippie-dippie, Shayna? The thing is, I do get it.” She gives a clipped laugh. “I want to forgive you. I want to move forward, because it’s not your fault they died. You didn’t know they would be hit. I just don’t know how to.”