I sleep like I’ve spent a lifetime awake. I think maybe I have. I stay in my room for three days mostly, just trying not to think about anything. On the third day, Beth bursts in. She opens the curtains and light is everywhere. It hurts my eyes.

“Get dressed,” she tells me. “Come on, Eddie.”

I don’t think she’s a big fan of how Mom is dealing with my “running away.” Mom’s chosen not to punish me for my “act of grief.” At least that’s what Beth calls it when she tells Mom she should be punishing me for my act of grief.

“You cannot maintain this permissive state,” I overheard her say. “We should have gone down to Lissie and brought her back ourselves. I don’t know what you were thinking when you agreed to let Milo get her. This is how it starts. Total downward spiral.”

“Thank you, Beth,” Mom replied.

“What was in Lissie, anyway?” Beth asked sourly.

Nothing, I wanted to say. Nothing was in Lissie.

“Did you hear me?” Beth asks. “Up! Up! Up! It’s summer vacation. I’m—I’m not letting you waste any more of it. Up.” She’s trying to be back on form, but even I can tell it’s different now. She doesn’t sound as sure of herself when she says these things to me. She pulls my blankets back, leaving my legs exposed. I don’t care. “Eddie, come on. Please.”

I close my eyes. Beth never says please to me and means it.

“My father’s dead,” I say.

“Believe it or not, that’s something that’s never far from anyone’s mind.”

I open my eyes.

“Why is he dead? Why do you think he killed himself?”

The question startles her a little. She stutters—I actually make Beth stutter.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say and—and I—” She clears her throat and picks imaginary lint from one of my blankets. “I don’t like to think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because … I don’t want to give up a second of this,” she says, and I guess she’s talking about living. “And that he could…” She shakes her head and blinks and her eyes get bright and her voice gets small. “It’s a waste … it’s just such a waste.”

It’s all a waste.

“Your mom wants you up and about. She’s worried.”

“That’s funny.”

“Downstairs, now.”

“It’s all I think about,” I tell her.

She stares at me for a long while.

“You know,” she says. “You’re still alive. I don’t know how many different ways I can try to tell you before it finally sinks in.”

And she goes downstairs.

I stay in bed for a while longer.

And then I get up.

Mom is sitting at the kitchen table when I make my entrance.

She’s dressed.

This absence of housecoat shocks me. I wonder if I’ll ever be used to it. She looks up when I enter the room and forces a smile at me, but the right side of her mouth twitches a little. She still looks like she’s just seconds away from crying—I’m used to that. I hold on to that. I don’t know why. It centers me from the fact that she’s not wearing the housecoat. That she’s in actual clothes. And she knows what I’m thinking all by the way I’m staring at her. She looks down at her outfit, self-conscious. She’s in a lime green blouse and black jeans. It’s something I’ve seen her in before, but she’s not wearing it like she used to. She’s lost weight.

“It looks all right, doesn’t it?” she asks. I nod. She studies me and I’m not sure what to say to her, and then she pats the seat next to her and I sit down. Neither of us moves for a minute and then she gently tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I haven’t been doing well. I’m not.”

Like it needs saying.

“I know,” I mumble.

“You’re not doing well.” She pulls me close and I let her. “And I want you to know that I understand why you left…” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You don’t. I close my eyes. She will never understand why I left. “And I want you to know things will change. Not overnight. I’m still trying to figure out where to start … But we’ll get there. Okay?”

I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how she could be okay to start over without knowing why. That she’s willing to try. How it’s even possible.

“Okay.”

I stare at the wall behind her head, where there is a photo of my father.

In the photo, he’s laughing at us.