“That’s really nice,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

Adam smiles. “So, listen, I’m glad I ran into you. Kyle mentioned that you two kind of got into it last week.”

“Is that what he’s saying?” I ask, trying for casual.

“Look, I know you guys have had your problems. But really, Soph, that fight he had with Mina—”

“What fight?”

“I thought that’s what you guys were…” He stops abruptly, red creeping along his cheekbones. “Um, maybe I shouldn’t—”

“No, you can tell me,” I say, maybe a little too quickly, because it makes his straight black brows scrunch together, forming a solid line.

“Look, Kyle’s my best friend—” he starts.

“And Mina was mine.”

Adam sighs. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “They just—they had a fight the day before she died. Kyle came over to my place shitfaced afterward. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but he was really upset. Dude was crying.”

“Kyle was crying?” I can’t even picture giant, lumbering Kyle in tears.

“It was weird,” Adam admits, shaking his head.

“Did he say anything? Tell you why they were fighting?” She hadn’t been taking his calls that day. What had they fought about that would drive him to cry on his best friend’s shoulder? Was it enough to make him want to kill her?

“He was so drunk, I could barely understand half of it. He just kept saying that she wouldn’t listen to him and his life was over. I think it’s hard for him, you know, because they fought and he never got to say he was sorry.”

“Yeah,” I say, but now I’m the one with the furrowed brow, absorbing this information.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Adam says when the silence has stretched out too long. He grabs the two bags of soil left in the cart and dumps them in the trunk for me, brushing his hands against his jeans. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” I say. “Thanks for telling me. And thanks for helping me with all this dirt.”

“You have someone to help you unload at home?”

“My dad’ll do it.”

“Text me sometime,” Adam calls out as he hops into his truck. “We’ll hang out.”

I wave at him as he drives off. I get into my car and press hard on the gas, like if I drive fast enough, I can leave all the questions behind.

When I get home, I leave the bags of soil in the car and head into the house. After I take a shower, I do what I’ve been dreading. I’ve put off searching Mina’s room for too long. If Trev won’t answer my calls, I’ll have to trick him. But that means I have to wait until my dad’s home so I can use his phone. So I force myself to grab a cardboard box and go upstairs to my room to start filling it with her things. They’re my ticket inside the house.

Through the years, her clothes and jewelry had mixed with mine. I have the folders full of newspaper clippings and printouts of online articles that she’d page through while we’d lie on my bed, listening to music. Books, movies, earrings, makeup, and perfume, they all mingled until they weren’t mine or hers anymore. Just ours.

Everywhere I look, there she is. I can’t escape her if I try.

I take my time choosing what to put in the box, knowing that Trev will thumb through every book, every article, as if they hold some deeper meaning, a message to comfort him. He’ll place her jewelry back in the big red velvet box on her dresser, and the clothes back in her closet, never to be worn again.

I’m sliding the last book into the box when I hear my dad open the front door.

I go downstairs. “Good day?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Yeah, honey, it was okay. Did you stay here the rest of the day?”

“I went to the nursery and got some more soil. And some daisies.”

“I’m glad you’re still gardening,” Dad says. “It’s good for you to be out in the sun.”

“I was gonna call Mom and see what she wanted to do for dinner, but my phone’s charging upstairs. Can I borrow yours?”

“Sure.” He digs in the pocket of his charcoal trousers, coming up with it.

“Thanks.”

I wait until he’s disappeared into the kitchen before going out onto the front porch. I call my mom first, just so I’m not lying, but it goes to voice mail. She’s probably in a meeting.

I punch in Trev’s number.

“It’s Sophie,” I say quickly when he answers. “Please don’t hang up.”

There’s a pause, then a sigh. “What is it?”

“I have some of her things. I thought maybe you’d want them. I can bring them by.”

Another long pause. “Give me a while,” he says. “Around six?”

“I’ll be there.”

“See you then.”

After I hang up, I get antsy. I can’t go back inside. I can’t just sit upstairs, next to the scraps of her I’ve dumped in a box. I go around back to my garden, because it’s the only distraction I have left.

Dad’s pulled the bags of soil out of the car and lined them up next to the beds for me already. I wave at him from the yard, and he waves back from the kitchen, where he’s washing dishes.

I collapse in an awkward heap on the ground, reach out, and dig through the soil of the last neglected bed, rooting out stones and throwing them hard over my shoulder. The summer sun pounds down, and sweat collects at the small of my back as I work. Bent at this angle, my leg is killing me, but I ignore the pain.

I tear open a bag of soil and heft it over the edge of the wood, spilling new dirt into the bed. I dig my hands into the moist soil over and over, letting it filter between my fingers, the rich smell a little bit like coming home. I mix it deeper and deeper into the bed, turning up the bottom soil, combining old and new. The tip of my finger brushes against something smooth and metallic, buried deep. I grasp it and pull a tarnished, muddy silver circle out of the ground.

Astonished, I lay the ring on the flat of my palm, brushing off the dirt.

It’s hers. I remember she thought she’d lost it at the lake last summer. Mine is in my jewelry box, locked away, because it doesn’t mean anything without its match.

I curl my fingers around the ring so tightly, I’m surprised the word stamped into the silver doesn’t carve its way into me the way she did.

20

THREE AND A HALF YEARS AGO (FOURTEEN YEARS OLD)

“Get up.”

I pull the covers over my head. “Leave me alone,” I moan.

I’ve been home from the hospital for a week and I haven’t left my bedroom. I’ve barely left my bed, the walker just another reminder of how much everything sucks. All I do is watch TV and take the cocktail of pain pills the doctors keep giving me, which leaves me so fuzzy, I don’t want to do anything, anyway.

“Get up.” Mina yanks at my blankets, and I can’t fight her with just one hand, my other still in a cast.

“You’re mean,” I tell her, rolling slowly over to my other side, smashing my extra pillow over my head instead. The effort it takes just to roll over makes me groan. Even with the pills, everything hurts, whether I’m still or moving.

Mina plops down on the bed next to me, not bothering to be ­gentle. Her weight jostles the mattress, making me rock back and forth. I wince. “Stop it.”

“Get out of bed, then,” she says.

“I don’t want to.”

“Too bad. Your mom says you won’t leave your room. And when your mom starts calling me for help, I know there’s a problem. So—up! You reek. You need to shower.”

“No,” I groan, smashing the pillow into my face. I have to use that stupid shower chair for old people with bad hips. Mom’s hovered outside the door each time, basically worrying herself into a fit about whether or not I’ll fall. “Just leave me alone.”

“Yeah, right, that’s really gonna work on me.” Mina rolls her eyes.

I still have the pillow pulled over my head, so I feel, rather than see, her get up off the bed. I hear the sound of water being turned on. For a second I think she’s turned the shower on in the bathroom, but then the pillow I’m holding is yanked out of my hands and, when I open my mouth to protest, Mina dumps a glass of cold water over my head. I shriek, jerking up way too fast, and it hurts, oh shit, it hurts. I’m still not used to how I can’t twist and move my spine like I used to. But I’m so angry at her that I don’t care. I push up on the bed with my good arm, grab the remaining pillow, and hurl it at her.

Mina giggles, delighted, dancing out of the way and then back, tilting the empty glass in her hand teasingly at me.

“Bitch,” I say, yanking my dripping hair out of my eyes.

“You can call me whatever you want, smelly, as long as you shower,” Mina says. “Come on, get up.”

She holds her hand out, and it’s not like anyone else who’s offered themselves to me as a temporary cane. Not like Dad, who wants to carry me everywhere. Not like Mom, who wants to wrap me in cotton and never let me go anywhere again. Not like Trev, who wants so desperately to fix me.

She holds her hand out, and when I don’t take it immediately, she snaps her fingers at me, pushy, impatient.

Just like always.

I fold my hand in hers, and when she smiles, it’s sweet and soft and full of the relief that can only come after a lot of worry.

21

NOW (JUNE)

The Bishop house has pink shutters and white trim, and an apple tree’s been growing tall in the front yard for as long as I can remember. I walk up the porch stairs carefully, the rail taking most of my weight as I balance the box on my hip.

Trev opens the door before I can knock, and for a second I think my plan will fail, that he won’t invite me in.