“It has to have been the hot dogs,” I said to Jessica. “This is exactly like her shellfish reaction.”

“But you ate the hot dogs,” said Jessica.

We yanked the hot dogs out of the freezer anyway and pored over the ingredients, looking up some of the more exotic-sounding ones online to see if they happened to have anything in common with the composition of shellfish, but they didn’t. We talked about the coleslaw, store-bought — nothing but cabbage, carrots, and mayonnaise. Jessica’s potato salad. But we’d all eaten that together.

In the bathroom, Kelli gasped and heaved.

“Maybe you should take her to Emergency,” said Jessica.

I couldn’t explain it, but I was confident I didn’t need to. There was something about this puking jag that was so familiar to me — so utterly on the nose — that I felt sure of its cause. It had to have been something she’d eaten. I’d experienced this reaction myself, and I’d experienced my sister experiencing it on enough vividly godawful occasions in the past — the night of the puréed seafood bisque at our cousin Tamara’s wedding reception (me), the weekend of the battered scallop at the Claybourne Society for Developmentally Disabled Children’s annual fish fry (Kelli). So there was no question in my mind. I knew what our shared shellfish reaction looked like, and it was this. And just as I knew precisely what kind of misery Kelli was going through now, I was equally certain that after a few hours she’d puke herself out and would, ultimately, be ok.

“I’m going to try and get a Gravol down her,” I told Jessica. “Once she’s gotten everything out. That usually does the trick.”

Jessica looked dubious, stymied by my certainty. She was still holding the package of hot dogs in her hand, and kept glancing at it, as if waiting for an explanation to materialize on the packaging (Now with shellfish!). We stood together in the foyer, listening to Kelli moan and retch. The acoustics of the bathroom made it sound particularly operatic.

“I’ll go down and be with her,” I assured Jessica. “I’ll put a heating pad on her back.”

“And keep her hydrated,” said Jessica. “If she doesn’t stop, if she can’t keep anything down, you’ve got to take her to the ER.”

“I will,” I promised.

“Will you be ok?” said Jessica. “Do you want us to stay?”

“You’ve done more than enough already,” I told her. Jessica had taken care of the vomit on the carpet herself after I’d rushed Kelli downstairs and set her up in the bathroom. Once I knew she was ok, I came back up to face the music in the living room, only to discover nothing but a damp spot on the carpet, and another of my mother’s candles burning nearby, filling the room with a smell like sweet summer hay.

“I only wish,” I joked to Jessica, “I had a TV I could give you.”

She grimaced at that. She didn’t think it was funny.