Then the spinning started. For a second I thought I had turned into one of those black birds—free and twirling through the sky—but it was my car bouncing off the guardrail and dancing across the four lanes of highway.

There was the sound of squealing tires, brakes trying desperately to work; then came a flash of blue, and everything went dark.

I was dead in an instant. I leaked out of my body and into the atmosphere just above the road. I watched as the paramedics pulled me from my car, which was crumpled in the front, curled in on itself. T-boned, I believe they call it, on the driver’s side.

The driver of the white van stumbled along the side of the road, refusing to be stilled. He gestured wildly at my car, called out obscenities. The driver of the blue car sat trapped in her vehicle, alive but looking as though she might be dying on the inside.

I watched it all unfold like some bad TV drama. The black birds continued to circle above the farmer’s field, unaffected by the man-made tragedy only a hundred or so feet away.

One of the three ambulances pulled away from the gory scene, my body inside. My only thought—June’s going to be so mad at me.

JUNE

I fit the plastic cup back into the round indentation of the seat tray. The wine tastes like vinegar, and I can bear only three small sips. My book rests open on the edge of the tray, but only to keep the passenger beside me from making small talk.

I haven’t been able to read since May died. Forty-three days. I’ve lived without my older sister for forty-three days. I wake up surprised by this every morning—it’s like realizing you don’t actually need oxygen to survive. We always said we’d die if the other one did. It wasn’t so much a promise as scientific fact. We just didn’t think one could survive without the other. And yet here I am, on a plane to a place I should be going to with my sister.

The flight attendant drops a bag of pretzels on my tray, then moves on, his plastic smile locked in place. Reflex has me pull the small plastic bag open and bite down on one of the salty twists of sawdust. The wine is the only thing I have to move the dry clump down my throat. I wince as it travels through me.

“The red is just as bad,” the man in the seat beside me says. I give him a polite smile and set my gaze back on my book. I used to be a friendly person, happy to engage in airplane small talk. Now everyone annoys me—all inane intrusions into my grief. Except my teenage daughters and maybe my ex-husband. Actually, no, my ex-husband annoys me too, maybe the most.