I could barely remember Auntie Jess. The memory was occluded by the very clear distinction of a sniveling kid in a courtyard—someone who’d been looking to earn his stripes as a member of our local racist troupe. He’d cried, begged, and asked for his dad to save him when the pronouncement had come from the court. I could remember seeing him and being disgustedly disappointed in him. That someone as awesome as my aunt had been killed by someone as far from awesome as him.

No—no. That hadn’t been my opinion. It had been something my mom had said that had struck so close to home that it felt like my own idea.

My opinion had been a quiet certainty that his craven behavior in court would at least ensure that he didn’t get what he wanted. He wouldn’t get his initiation into the gang if he acted like that. And I’d been wrong. He was young, he hadn’t been tried as an adult, and he’d gotten out in short order. He’d gone straight to Empire Eighty-Eight and been welcomed with open arms.

Auntie Jess—she hadn’t been a true aunt—Uncle Mike hadn’t gotten around to marrying her. She was a pretty, dark-haired woman in the photographs we had too few of—good straight-on images of her face being rare. She was foggy memories amid holidays and other focuses. I could remember bedtime stories with—with Amy and me on either side of her. My most recent memory of her was all of us in the backyard, Eric, Amy and I trying to do a thing chaining water dart guns together, like Eric had seen in a video. He’d been insistent we’d make it work, and his dad was to be the victim of the barrage. Auntie Jess had saved us by grabbing one of the water dart guns and starting a war.

There’d been a break in the conversation, but it lingered in a way that made me think my mom was lost in memory too.

I was trying to formulate a response when she spoke up again. “The media hounded us, after Fleur died. We had a lot of discussions on how New Wave should handle it. We were disheartened, heartbroken, tired. We decided to let the news cycle roll over while we mourned. It made sense. By the books, it was how we were supposed to handle the public relations side of it. As a family, we needed to take care of each other.”

“Yeah. It makes sense.”

“All the sense in the world,” she said, in a different tone. Wistful.

I sighed.

“I heard that,” she said.

“Things were coming together. I’m worried about timing. It’s occupying us at a time when we really have bigger things to worry about.”