I shut the car door and walk toward her cautiously. Dead leaves crunch under my feet, but she doesn’t look up.

“Mind if I join you?” My tone is practiced, soft, and it rings false to my ears. But she shrugs, resigned, as if she’s been here, waiting for me this whole time.

“Do you remember me?” I ask. “I came to see you a few weeks ago. To talk about Jay.”

She doesn’t flinch like I was expecting. Simply stares out across the lawn at the fountain like she’s not really seeing it.

We sit in silence, watching girls race across the grass with yoga mats, shopping bags, books, and laptops. Everyone moving, singing, smiling. Everyone, except Katie.

“Is that why you’re here?” I try again, gesturing from the tree to one of her sisters video chatting on her cell phone. “It’s okay to need space to grieve.”

She pulls a blade of grass from the lawn. Scrunches it between her fingers.

I take a breath through my nose, decide honesty is the only option I have left. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” I tell her, and her eyes flicker loosely to the edge of my face, drawn—in spite of herself—to the vulnerability she sees there. “And Jay—he seemed like a good guy.”

The interest I won with my confession dissolves, and she glares as if she registers the lie.

“You don’t know anything,” she hisses. Then she grabs her bookbag and stumbles to her feet. And as I watch her walk away, I think that might be the truest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

My parents’ house is bathed in golden light, that fall sun that turns everything green and yellow, illuminating patches of pine straw.

I take the stone steps two at a time and unlock the front door with a quick glance over my shoulder.

It’s quiet inside.

“Hello?” I call.

But no one answers.

I expect a flood of relief at having the place to myself, but it doesn’t come.

What I need more than anything is sleep. But I keep hearing the hard edge in Teddy’s voice when he called me selfish, seeing Cindy with her scraped palms and bloody lip, the rusted handcuffs on the wall, the boy reduced to wordless tremors.