Like Jay, Katie lives at her sorority house. Cast-iron railings and columns weave slender black webs up and down the double porches. It’s a historic landmark—built for one of Georgia’s first millionaires, and lived in by several others, before it was sold to Gamma Delta in the ’80s. With its white paint and black shutters, the building reminds me of a plump zebra. As a child, I always wanted to live in that house—whenever we drove by, I pressed my face to the passenger window and imagined it was full of secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves and large fireplaces you could walk into. I didn’t know about the handfuls of women who rotated in and out of the house every few years, the socials, and statistics. I just knew I loved the idea of it. The easy way my imagination could fill it with magic wardrobes and hidden passageways.

Teddy looks impressed in a way it’s clear he hasn’t given the house a second thought until now. But standing in front of the small fountain and double front staircase, the sounds of traffic ebbing behind him, he blinks at the white building towering over Milledge.

We pass two girls lying in the sloping yard, sharing a pair of headphones. Golden chrysanthemums and pale purple asters bloom in flower beds on either side of them. They’re wrapped in a plaid blanket and don’t look up when we near. I’m alarmed by their vulnerability, their implicit trust that we—two strangers approaching a few feet away—won’t do them harm.

At the edge of the grass, a wooden stage is set up for some kind of event. There’s an empty popcorn machine, and painted road signs with songs about destinations—LA WOMAN, VIVA LAS VEGAS, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA—pointing in various directions, not linked to the places on the signs at all. ALABAMA points north. LAS VEGAS points east.

At the door, I catch Teddy’s eye. Most of the time, he’s better with witnesses, but if something happened to Katie—if Jay couldn’t control his brothers, or hadn’t, in fact, changed his mind about sharing like Cade said, then Teddy needs to disappear into the wallpaper or behind some long curtains quick so I can hear what she has to say.

There’s a lull in the noisy stream of cars. He nods, and I take a deep breath.