“It’s like I’m drowning,” she said. “I’m constantly drowning, and there’s nothing to hold on to. The water’s either at my neck, or it’s coming down my throat, and it’s all I can do just to stay afloat. I’m kicking my arms and legs so hard—so hard—just trying not to die. And I’m so tired. And I think: Maybe dying would be easier than this. Anything has to be easier than going on like this, because I can’t do it, I just can’t do it anymore.”

Finally, she looked at me.

“Have you ever felt like that?” she asked.

More than she could ever know.

More than I could ever tell her.

“You know what you need?” I said. I removed my phone from my pocket. “You need some Sufjan.”

“Soo-fawn,” Wynonna repeated, skeptically. She blinked the last of her tears away. “What the hell is a soo-fawn?”

“Sufjan Stevens. He’s the greatest musician of our time.”

Wynonna rolled her eyes. “Oh. Awesome.”

“Close your eyes,” I instructed. I unplugged Imogen’s phone from the adapter. Switched it out with mine. Scrolled through the artists, to the S’s, to Sufjan Stevens’s “Chicago.”

Chicago.

Goddamn.

If ever there was a specific song, meant for a specific person, at a specific moment in time, “Chicago” was meant for Wynonna right fucking now.

I held my thumb over the play button and glanced at Wynonna. Her eyes were still open.

“CLOSE THEM,” I commanded.

“Okay, okay, I’m closing them,” said Wynonna. “Jesus.”

I pressed play.

A series of chimes dinged, escalating like some sort of celestial elevator.

The strings came swooping in, strong and swift and heroic.

A stampede of folksy instruments paraded through the speakers. The thundering beat of new life.

And then silence—all except for a faint keyboard chant. This chant became the frame for words—Sufjan’s tender words—of love, and mistakes, and re-creation.

I thought about what this song had always meant to me—about how to free myself. “Wynonna Jones, you are no longer of this world,” I said. “You are giving yourself up to the universe.”

Wynonna smiled at the thought of this. But she kept her eyes closed, and her comments to herself.

I spoke of disintegrating, dissolving into your surroundings. About atoms coming undone from each other, and being freed from yourself.

She was free.

She was free to float upward. There was nothing to stop her. She was floating up through the roof of the car, through the atmosphere, through the stratosphere, into the stars. Into outer space. Her atoms were intermingling with stardust. She was floating up here because this was where she belonged. Her atoms were weaving like thread into the fabric of the universe. Together, they formed a tapestry—a great, infinite tapestry—of stars and nebulae, of death and darkness, of life and creation. Swirling together. Endless.

She was the universe.