Abby picks at her salad and after about four bites announces that she’s done. I don’t try to argue. On average we can only get my little sister to eat about one full meal a day, and she did that at breakfast. I tell her that she can go over and look at the dolphins, and away she goes, half skipping, half running to the edge of the dolphin tank.

Afton and I stay at the table. Afton uses her debit card to pay for the meal.

“Are you okay?” she asks me. “You look . . . weirder than normal.”

I don’t say anything right away. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything I can say.

And then Afton says, “I’m sorry, okay?”

I blink at her. “What?”

“I’m sorry I’ve been kind of mean to you. I know you’re going through a thing. It just hurt my feelings when you called me a—”

“I didn’t call you a slut!” I exclaim. “I was going to say that you’re perfect, and no, I didn’t exactly mean that as a compliment, but I did not say slut, because I would never say that and I don’t think you are.”

“Oh,” she says. “Okay. Well, I’m not perfect.”

“Oh, I know,” I say.

She smiles. “Right. Anyway. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I say, but this topic feels like a lifetime ago. We’re on to more serious catastrophes now; she just doesn’t know it yet. I take a shuddering breath. I have to tell her. She’s my sister, and this is about her, too. She should know.

But it feels like I’m about to tell her that someone—or something, I guess—has died, and the dead thing is this fanciful notion we’ve been holding on to for so long of our family as this secure little unit. Mom and Pop and Afton and Abby and me. Our family. And that idea was basically stabbed through the heart the moment I peeked through the adjoining door of our hotel room.

But I’m being dramatic. Again. Because of course, she and I both knew deep down that something like this might be coming.

“I need to tell you something,” Afton says, which short-circuits my brain for a minute, because what could she possibly have to tell me? “Logan and I broke up.”

I blink at her. “What? No.”

“It was a mutual thing,” she explains. “Amicable. Friendly. He was thinking about going to Stanford, but then he decided he wanted to go with Dartmouth instead.”

Wow. Dartmouth. Logan always struck me as a smart guy. He’d have to be, for Afton to be interested in him. “Where’s Dartmouth, again?”