“Yeah, you do. But it’s okay. You made me realize something. You didn’t judge what I did. You didn’t hate me for it. I thought everyone did. You especially.”

“I didn’t want to blame you, because I didn’t want to blame myself.”

“Why would you blame yourself?”

“Because I should’ve stopped her. And I didn’t do anything.”

Parker looked at me for a long time, then: “You couldn’t have stopped Kori. Since when did she ever do anything she didn’t want to?”

I grimaced, remembering what Shay had told me. I’d always mistook her independence for bravery, but now I think it was just another way she protected herself.

“You haven’t asked me again about the night Kori died. Do you still want to know what happened?”

Kori had gone to Golden to confront her father, or my mother, or both of them. Shay never showed. Without Shay she’d never gotten the courage up to go through with it. Parker brought her home. End of story. Lexi was right, it didn’t change anything.

“I think I know everything I need to,” I said softly.

“You know those flour babies everybody’s got?”

I nodded, feeling their collective weight in my bag. How could I forget?

“You know, Doc never did say what we were supposed to do with them. He just said we’d discuss it later. Everybody assumed they were supposed to do the right thing and take care of it. You want to know what Curt and Brian did with theirs?”

I nodded, feeling a little sick about getting yet another one of Doc’s assignments screwed up.

“They had their flour babies on the hood of the car. They must’ve gotten to school early, because they were coming toward us. Curt gunned it to hit one of the new speed bumps and the flour went everywhere, all over the windshield. He swerved right into my lane. I was going too fast, didn’t realize they had put the speed bumps in. They hadn’t even put signs up. They should’ve put signs up. Yeah, I’d been a little high, but I saw what happened. They hit me.”

I reeled from the image, more so because I knew that Doc must’ve known about the flour. That he probably blamed himself. But that was crazy. How could he have foreseen something like that happening? How could he have stopped it? And in thinking those words, I forgave myself.

As I exited the stair door at the hospital, I took a deep breath and looked up. The yellow aspen groves surrounding Kismet shocked me. Their leaves had turned overnight, making the world so different and yet so much the same.

My steps were slow as I returned to school. In addition to figuring out how to confront Mr. K., I had to figure out what to say to Mom.