The second Ariel figured her dad was asleep, she snuck back upstairs and retrieved the DVDs. Back inside her room, she curled up in her closet and popped one of the discs into her laptop, fast-forwarding to all the scenes with her mom.

There were days when she could hardly remember what her mom looked like—at least, how Mom looked before the accident. What she mostly remembered was the way Mom looked in the car.

Ariel’s stomach hurt at the memory, which never did anyone any good. What’s more, a real shrink should have gotten that. Shouldn’t he know that talking about the accident was massively screwed up and totally a waste of time?

Of course, in all her trying to convince her dad that the guy was a quack, she couldn’t talk about the accident because she had zero interest in letting him or anyone else know that she had to watch her mom die in the car. If Dad knew she had been conscious while it happened, he’d have her locked up for good, figuring she was about to go all Girl, Interrupted or something. So she kept quiet. Besides, it would just make him feel worse. That was something she’d figured out since the accident: Why say the stuff that hurt other people? No point.

Sitting in the closet, Ariel started to fall asleep to footage of her own birthday party the year before. But she jolted fully awake when she heard a crash in the entry hall. Sharp voices sounded, coming all the way up the stairs and into her closet. Miranda and her dad.

Ariel focused on the computer screen. “Everything is fine,” she whispered, tracing the lines of her mother’s image as she brought a store-bought cake from the kitchen, birthday candles flickering.

But her father’s voice boomed, making it hard to stay focused on the screen. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, young lady?”

“Out, Dad. I’m going out!”

“Like hell you are!”

Miranda sounded as angry as their father, the truce from earlier swept away like store-bought or even homemade cake scraped from a plate into the trash.

Ariel started to hum. She found another DVD, one they hadn’t watched, and popped it in the computer. She could ignore the fight if she tried hard enough. She would pretend that everything was fine.

She clicked on play and Mom and Miranda flared to life, laughing as they chased each other around the den. Mom was dressed up in a tight red dress that stopped just above her knees, her hair teased and puffy, and her lips painted a darker shade of red. Ariel’s own voice from behind the camera asked where she was going.

Her mom laughed. “Where am I going?” She made a big production of considering the question. “A book party, darling. Yes, one of those book groups where people talk about characters who are happy and lead exciting lives.”

“Is Dad going, too?” Ariel heard herself ask.

For a second, her mom’s smile tightened. “Dad is busy.”

Mom had put makeup on Miranda, who was in seventh grade back then, and her sister strutted into the frame, primping for the camera. “I’m fabulous,” she cooed into the lens. “Simply fabulous.”

Ariel heard herself snort in the background.

Miranda stuck out her tongue and twirled away.

Pulling the computer closer, Ariel focused on the screen, remembering the details of their old house. The dark hardwood floors, the huge rugs, the fancy furniture. Her mother had liked fancy. Her dad never had.

“All you have to do is pay for it, Gabriel. It’s not like you live in it all that much.”

The memory leaped out from somewhere, jarring Ariel back into watching the DVD. Their old doorbell rang and Ariel watched her mother’s expression change, her laughter gone as she smoothed her dress.

“How do I look, sweetie?”

“Perfect,” Ariel heard herself say.

In the background of the spinning footage, Miranda raced to the door while her mother stood, waiting.

“Turn that thing off, A.”

But she hadn’t, and Mom had forgotten she was there. Miranda ran back into the room, excited, and suddenly Ariel remembered what had happened next.

Her heart started to pound as Uncle Anthony walked onto the screen, dressed in a sports jacket, blue shirt, and jeans. He stopped when he saw her mom, smiling at her.

“Anthony!” her mother cried.

Then the footage snapped off. She could remember hitting the power button and going over to say hi.

Uncle Anthony had come in and out of their lives for as long as she could remember. And for as long as she could remember, he made her mom smile and made her dad really mad.

The difficult thing about life was that once you learned things, you couldn’t unlearn them. Like remembering her uncle walking into their house in Montclair. Her uncle loving her mom first, before her dad came along. The date of her parents’ marriage and Miranda’s birthday. It was like her parents had done everything they could to hide the date they got married. Ugh. Her heart thumped in a way that made the back of her eyes hurt and her throat swell.

Suddenly, she heard Miranda flying up the stairs.

“Your acting out stops now, do you hear me?” Dad roared, his voice thrumming through the walls as he followed after her.

“Up yours!” Miranda shrieked back.

“You do not sneak out of this house,” he ground out.

Ariel shut the laptop and pressed her hands to her ears.

“No, no, no,” she whispered. Whispering no never did any good, but she did it anyway. Same as she had in the car, lying there with her mom.

The memory made her get to her feet, unsteady at first, before she threw open the door. This time she wasn’t locked down by a seat belt and crumpled metal. This time she could do something. Help, maybe.

She opened the door to her bedroom just in time to see Dad walk by, gripping Miranda by the arm, propelling her toward her bedroom. For a second, she barely recognized her sister. Miranda wore a tight dress that she definitely didn’t buy with Dad in tow, and she held a pair of those super-high heels. The five-inch ones that Miranda would never have been able to walk in. Not that she was going to get a chance to try since Ariel was pretty sure their dad would kill her first. Or lock her away until she was twenty-one.

“You can’t do this! My friends are waiting for me! It’s hard enough to make friends around here without you making it impossible!” Miranda screamed.

Not that Dad listened. He forced Miranda to her room. “What kind of friends are you meeting?” he demanded. “Dressed like that?”

Ariel backed up and closed her door, then ran over to her window that led out to the fire escape. When she pulled it open, cool air struck her face, bringing the sound of the city with it. Ariel clenched her teeth as she stepped out onto the thin metal landing. She hated heights, hated the fire escape, had loved it when her dad had forbidden both her and Miranda from going anywhere near the fire escape. In her nearly thirteen years, Ariel had never completely defied her father. She had left that to Miranda. But the only way she knew how to help was to distract her dad from how mad he was at Miranda. She would make him mad at her.

Clasping her fingers tightly around the railing, ignoring the fear that the metal would disintegrate under her feet, letting her crash into the garden below, making her disappear, Ariel crawled over to her sister’s window. By then, her dad stood inside Miranda’s room lecturing, Miranda screaming back.

Just then the wind gusted and the fire escape swayed, the metal groaning in protest. Ariel’s stomach heaved, and she realized she was acting like an idiot. She leaped up, but her sneaker caught in the metal grating and she fell against her sister’s window.

Faster than she would have thought possible, her dad was across the room. He had never been pretty, not like Uncle Anthony. But now the look on his face was terrifying. For one thing, he didn’t recognize her at first. The minute he did, he wrenched open the window and hauled her inside.

“Oops,” she managed, a smile faltering on her lips. “I guess I’m in trouble now.”

Ariel watched the gears in his head churn, emotion flashing across his face. Miranda was staring at her like she was crazy. Which she probably was.

“Go to your room, Ariel,” her father said. The words seemed to stick in his throat.

“You know how you always think I should talk?” she said instead. “Well, guess what, I’m ready.”

“Go to your room!” he shouted.

He didn’t wait for her to leave. He turned around and went down the stairs without another word.

Ariel stood frozen, hoping he wouldn’t leave the house, leave them. Instead, he slammed the door of his study.

“Are you crazy?” Miranda hissed.

Ariel forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Me? Nah?”

“You did that on purpose.”

“Get caught on the fire escape on purpose? Now you’re crazy.”

Miranda looked at her, and suddenly Ariel couldn’t stop herself. “Mir?”

“What?”

“Couldn’t you be a little bit nicer to Dad?”

Miranda’s lips pursed. “Why would I do that? Dad’s an ass.”

“So—so he doesn’t get, like, so mad that he leaves us,” Ariel whispered. “He could just hire someone to deal with us, you know, and go back to work all the time.”

For a second, Miranda looked shocked. Then the hardness returned. “No. I cannot be one bit nicer to Dad, and frankly, if he hired someone to be here with us, all the better. My friends talk all the time how they just have to pay their nannies or help or whoever twenty bucks every time they want to sneak out.” She flopped on her bed, grabbed a pillow, and hugged it tight. “I’m going to pray he hires someone. Anyone’s better than him.”