“Nope. San Francisco—permanently. When they divorced, she moved back there to be closer to her family. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not a big Japanese-American crowd in the Bible Belt. Dad’s actually from New Jersey. I don’t know what kind of voodoo he pulled to get her to marry him and move here in the first place. He’s very successful in his business, but an epic failure at the whole marriage thing. And the parenting thing.”

So Well’s mom is in California too. I bet she misses him. I bet she calls. I bet she flies him first class out to see her. I wonder if he wishes he could live there around people who look more like him. But if he did, we would never have met, and I already can’t picture that version of my life.

“So, you’re home alone?” I ask.

“Um, no. The home is alone. I, however, am here with the lovely Louise Montgomery, and she is about to sing me a song that will carry me safely onward.”

“No, uh-uh.” I move backward toward the French doors.

“Oh, come on. We can do what we did before. Just pick a song. Anything. And we’ll pull it up on my phone. And I won’t even look at you. Swear. We can turn back to back, and you can pretend you are alllllllll alone.”

I picture him going back to his empty house. He’s more alone than me right now. And I think of the pinky promise I couldn’t make. I can do this, though. I can sing.

“All right,” I say, despite the fact that I want to puke.

“All right!”

“Shhhh!”

“Okay, okay. What do you want to sing?”

Nothing, I want to say, while he pulls out his phone. But then something comes to me, and I tell him to put it away. I don’t need the music.

“Turn around,” I say, and he does so we’re back to back but not touching. Then I close my eyes, and it’s like I really am all alone, singing to myself:

I start off low and quiet, so it’s almost a hum.

“ ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…’ ”

I can see Mom lying next to me in our truck bed with the canopy off so we can watch for shooting stars. This was our bedtime song. My heart twists. It hurts to sing it, and I wonder, wherever she is, if she feels it right now too.

“ ‘In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me…’ ”