“Now!”

“No Karie no Karie no Karie no Karie —”

“Get the fuck in here!”

Without lowering the volume on her protests, Kelli finally lurched into the elevator — and hollered all the way to the ground floor, despite the presence of an apprehensive mother and bug-eyed daughter who had joined us a couple of floors down.

When it came time to see the next condo, Kelli wasn’t budging. I’d had every reason to expect that would be the case, but still it made me furious. The rage that overtook me in the previous building was still simmering as we drove to the next viewing. Jessica could feel it. She suggested a coffee break but I said no, we’d already had enough coffee and we’d already wasted enough time.

I knew I should’ve calmed down by now. A person couldn’t propose to spend her life with someone like my sister and be a grudge-holder. Because the sister in question literally cannot be reasoned with, and the person who is capable of reason needs to grasp that. A person needs to have, therefore — as her mother was always said to have — the patience of a saint. At the very least, a person needs to accept she’ll experience the occasional eruptions of anger, and then, saint-like, let them go.

But I couldn’t let it go. Things had been going so smoothly and Kelli had been such an easygoing delight and the two of us had been moving forward with such momentum and now, just as we were taking our first, shaky, newborn-foal steps into the future, now she digs in her heels? Now the old, familiar Kelli reasserts herself? By old and familiar, what I really meant, I suppose, was adolescent. Kelli’s mulishness had reminded me, viscerally, of our adolescence together — had transported me back into it, it felt like. As Jessica negotiated traffic to the next condo, I sat in the seat beside her, seething with what felt like a downright hormonal wash of irrationality and outrage. Because of course it was ridiculous to get mad at Kelli for being Kelli. I’d known that then as well as I knew it now. But, my angry teenage brain kept shrieking, why does Kelli always have to be so Kelli? My angry teenage brain felt righteous, convinced it had a point. It refused to back down.

“Are you coming, Kelli?” I said. Jessica had parked and the three of us sat tensely in the quiet car.

“Not coming,” said Kelli.

“We’re going to see another condo. Would you like to come with us or not?” My voice, I could hear, was ridiculous. I was spitting out each syllable like a toxin.

“Stay the car,” said Kelli.

“Last chance,” I said. “Jessica and I are going to go look at another place. Do you want us to go without you?”

“Not coming,” said Kelli. Her voice rose. “Not coming, no Karie, not coming, no, Kelli stay the car, Karie, no —”