But I think it only fair to warn you, all those songs about California lied.

—The Lucksmiths

I stood up and walked down the steps to meet him in the driveway. I was suddenly very conscious that I was barefoot, in old jeans and the show T-shirt from last year’s musical. This had become my de facto outfit, and I’d put it on that morning automatically, without considering the possibility that this Roger guy might be disarmingly cute.

And he really was, I saw now that he was closer. He had wide hazel eyes and unfairly long lashes, a scattering of freckles, and an air of easy confidence. I felt myself shrinking in a little in his presence.

“Hey,” he said, dropping his bags and holding out his hand to me. I paused for a second—nobody I knew shook hands—but then extended my hand to him, and we shook quickly. “I’m Roger Sullivan. You’re Amy, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. The word stuck in my throat a little, and I cleared it and swallowed. “I mean, yes. Hi.” I twisted my hands together and looked at the ground. I could feel my heart pounding and wondered when a simple introduction had changed to something unfamiliar and scary.

“You look different,” Roger said after a moment, and I looked up at him to see him studying me. What he mean by that? Different from what he’d been expecting? What had he been expecting? “Different than you used to look,” he clarified, as though he’d just read my thoughts. “I remember you from when we were kids, you and your brother. But you still have the red hair.”

I touched it self-consciously. Charlie and I both had it, and when we were younger, and together all the time, people were always stopping us to point it out, as though we’d never noticed ourselves. Charlie’s had darkened over time to auburn, whereas mine stayed vividly red. I hadn’t minded it until recently. Lately it seemed to attract attention, when that was the last thing I wanted. I tucked it behind my ears, trying not to pull on it. It had started falling out about a month ago, a fact that was worrying me, but I was trying not to think about it too much. I told myself that it was the stress of finals, or the lack of iron in my mostly pizza diet. But usually, I tried not to brush my hair too hard, hoping it would just stop on its own.

“Oh,” I said, realizing that Roger was waiting for me to say something. It was like even the basic rules of conversation had deserted me. “Um, yeah. I still have it. Charlie’s is actually darker now, but he’s … um … not here.” My mother hadn’t told anyone about Charlie’s rehab and had asked me to tell people the cover she made up. “He’s in North Carolina,” I said. “At an academic enrichment program.” I pressed my lips together and looked away, wishing that he would leave and I could go back inside and shut the door, where nobody would try and talk to me and I could be alone with my routine. I was out of practice talking to cute guys. I was out of practice talking to anyone.

Right after it happened, I hadn’t said much. I didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to open the door for people to ask me how I was feeling about things. And it wasn’t like my mother or Charlie even tried. Maybe the two of them had talked to each other, but neither of them talked to me. But that was understandable—I was sure both of them blamed me. And I blamed myself, so it made sense that we weren’t exactly sharing our feelings around the kitchen table. Dinners were mostly silent, with Charlie either sweaty and jumpy or swaying slightly, eyes glazed, as my mother focused on her plate. The passing back and forth of dishes and condiments, and then the cutting and chewing and swallowing process, seemed to take up so much time and focus that it was really amazing to think we’d once had conversations around the dinner table. And even if I did think about saying something occasionally, the silence of the empty chair to my left killed that impulse.

At school my teachers had left me alone, not calling on me for the first month afterward. And then after that, I guess it just became habit that they didn’t. It seemed like people could revise who you were very quickly, and they seemed to have forgotten that I once used to raise my hand and give my opinions, that I once had something to say about the Boxer Rebellion or symbolism in The Great Gatsby.

My friends had gotten the message pretty quickly that I didn’t want to talk to them about it. And without talking about it, it became clear that then we really couldn’t talk about anything. After not very long, we just stopped trying, and soon I couldn’t tell if I was avoiding them or they were avoiding me.

Julia was the one exception. I hadn’t told her what had happened. I knew that if I told her, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook. She wasn’t going to go away easily. And she didn’t. She’d found out, of course, and had called me constantly right after, calls I let go to voice mail. The calls had tapered off, but she’d started e-mailing instead. They came every few days now, with subjects like “Checking In” and “Worried About You” and “For God’s Sake, Amy.” I let them pile up in my in-box, unread. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing it, but I knew that if I talked to Julia about it, it would become real in some way I couldn’t quite handle.

But as I looked at Roger, I also realized that it had been awhile since I’d had an interaction with a guy. Not since the night of the funeral, when I’d invited myself to Michael’s dorm room, knowing exactly what was going to happen. When I left an hour later, I was disappointed, even though I’d gotten exactly what I thought I wanted.

“It’s not true, you know,” said Roger. I looked at him, trying to figure out what he meant. “Your shirt,” he said, pointing. I glanced down at the faded blue cotton, emblazoned with ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. “I can’t,” he continued cheerfully. “Never have been able to.”

“It’s a musical,” I said shortly. He nodded, and silence fell, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say on the subject. “I should get my things,” I said, turning to the house, wondering how the hell we were ever going to get through four days.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll load my stuff in. Do you need a hand?”

“No,” I said, heading up the stairs. “The car’s open.” Then I escaped inside, where it was blessedly cool and dark and quiet and I was alone. I took a breath, savoring the silence, then continued into the kitchen.

The gift my mother had sent was sitting on the kitchen table. It had arrived a few days ago, but I hadn’t opened it. If I opened it, it meant that the trip was actually going to happen. But there was no denying it now—the proof was making comments about my T-shirt and putting his duffel bag in the car. I tore open the package and shook out a book. It was heavy and spiral-bound, with a dark blue cover. AWAY YOU GO! was printed in white fifties-style script. And underneath that, Traveler’s Companion. Journal/Scrapbook/Helpful Hints.

I picked it up and flipped through it. It seemed to be mostly blank pages, with a scrapbook section for preserving “Your Lasting Memories” and a journal section for recording “Your Wandering Thoughts.” There also seemed to be quizzes, packing lists, and traveling tips. I shut the book and looked at it incredulously. This was the “present” my mother sent me for the trip? Seriously?

I tossed it on the counter. I wasn’t about to be tricked into thinking this was some sort of fun, exciting adventure. It was a purely functional trip that I was being forced to take. So I didn’t see any reason to make sure I’d always remember it. People didn’t buy souvenirs from airports they’d had layovers in.

I walked through the rooms on the first floor of the house, making sure that everything was in order. And everything was—Hildy the Realtor had made sure of that. All our furniture was still there—she preferred not to sell empty houses—but it no longer even felt like ours. Ever since my mother hired her, she’d taken over our house to the point where I sometimes had trouble remembering what it used to feel like when we were all just living in it, and it wasn’t being sold to people as the place where they’d always be happy. It had started to feel more like a set than a house. Too many deluded young marrieds had traipsed through it, seeing only the square footage and ventilation, polluting it with their furniture dreams and imagined Christmases. Every time Hildy finished a showing and I was allowed to come back from walking around the neighborhood with my iPod blasting Sondheim, I could always sense the house moving further away from what it had been when it was ours. Strange perfume lingered in the air, things were put in the wrong place, and a few more of the memories that resided in the walls seemed to have vanished.

I climbed the stairs to my room, which no longer resembled the place I’d lived my whole life. Instead it looked like the ideal teen girl’s room, with everything just so—meticulously arranged stacks of books, alphabetized CDs, and carefully folded piles of clothing. It now looked like “Amy!’s” room. It was neat, orderly, and devoid of personality—probably much like the imaginary shiny-haired girl who lived in it. Amy! was probably someone who baked goods for various sports teams and cheered wholeheartedly at pep rallies without contemplating the utter pointlessness of sports or wanting to liven things up with a little torch song medley. Amy! probably babysat adorable moppets up the street and smiled sweetly in class pictures and was the kind of teen that any parent would want. She probably would have giggled and flirted with the cute guy in her driveway, rather than failing miserably at a simple conversation and running away. Amy! had not, in all probability, killed anyone recently.

My gaze fell to my nightstand, which had on it only my alarm clock and a thin paperback, Food, Gas, and Lodging. It was my father’s favorite book, and he’d given me his battered copy for Christmas. When I’d opened it, I’d been disappointed—I’d been hoping for a new cell phone. And it had probably been totally obvious to him that I hadn’t been excited about the present. It was thoughts like that, wondering if I had hurt his feelings, that ran through my head at three a.m., ensuring that I wouldn’t get any sleep.

When he’d given it to me, I hadn’t gotten any further than the title page. I’d read his inscription: To my Amy—this book has seen me through many journeys. Hoping you enjoy it as much as I have. With love, Benjamin Curry (your father). But then I’d stuck it on my nightstand and hadn’t opened it again until a few weeks ago, when I’d finally started reading it. As I read, I found myself wondering with every turn of the page why I couldn’t have done this months ago. I’d read to page sixty-one and stopped. Marking page sixty-two was a note card with my father’s writing on it, some notes about Lincoln’s secretary, part of the research he’d been doing for a book. But it was in the novel as a bookmark. Page sixty-one was the place he’d gotten to when he’d last read it, and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to turn the page and read beyond that.

I still had no idea what Walter saw. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to know. But I wasn’t about to leave the book behind. I picked it up and tucked it carefully in my purse. I gave the room a last look, turned out the light, dragged my rolling suitcase out into the hall, and closed the door behind me. It was actually a relief not to see the room anymore. In the past month, I’d spent almost no time in it, crashing downstairs on the couch most nights and just heading up to get clothes. It was too stark a reminder of my life Before. And it still didn’t make any sense to me that absolutely everything in my life could have changed, that it all could have become After, but the pictures on my walls and the junk in the back of my closet remained the same. And after Hildy’s Amy! makeover, it seemed like the room had become a version of myself that I would never live up to.

I was about to drag my suitcase downstairs, but I stopped and looked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I hadn’t been in it since the morning of the funeral, when I’d stood in the doorway so my mother could see if the black dress I’d chosen was appropriate.

I walked down the hall, passing Charlie’s bedroom, which was adjacent to mine. The door to Charlie’s room had been closed ever since my mother slammed it behind her after she had literally yanked him out of it one month earlier. I opened the door to the master bedroom and stood on the threshold. Though tidier than it once had been, this room was at least still recognizable, with its neatly made king-size bed and stacks of books on each nightstand. I noticed that the books on my father’s side, thick historical biographies alternating with thin paperback mysteries, were beginning to gather dust. I looked away quickly, reminding myself to breathe. It felt like I was underwater and running out of oxygen, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay there much longer. The door to my father’s closet was ajar, and I could see inside it the tie rack Charlie had made for him in fifth-grade woodshop with his ties still hanging on it, all preknotted to save him time in the morning.

Trying to quash the panicky feeling that was beginning to rise, I turned away from my father’s side of the room and crossed to my mother’s dresser. On an impulse, I pulled open her top drawer—socks and stockings—and reached into the very back, on the left side. The drawer was emptier than usual, but even so, it took me a second to find it. But when my fingers closed around something smooth and plastic, I knew that Charlie had been telling the truth. I pulled it out and saw that it was an ancient pantyhose egg, with L’EGGS printed on the side in gold script that was flaking off. I cracked the egg open and saw, as promised, that the egg was stuffed with cash.

Charlie had told me that he’d found it sometime last year—I hadn’t wanted to ask how or why. But there was a piece of me that registered how desperate he must have been to have found the money my mother kept hidden in her sock drawer. That was about the time I started noticing just how far gone he actually was. Charlie had told me that he only dipped into it in case of emergencies and was always careful to put the money back, since he was sure Mom would notice. It always had six hundred dollars in it, mostly hundreds and fifties. Maybe Charlie had been too out of it by the end to care, or maybe he hadn’t had time to replenish it before he found himself on a plane to North Carolina, but there was only four hundred dollars in it now.

I heard the front door slam downstairs and realized that Roger was probably wondering why it was taking me so long to get my suitcase. Not stopping to think about what I was doing, I pocketed the cash, snapped the egg shut, and put it back in its place. A piece of me was running through justifications—you couldn’t trust these house hunters and shady Realtors, really I was just helping my mother out—but I knew none of them were the real reason I’d taken the money. So then why had I?

I pushed the thought away and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind me and dragging my suitcase down the stairs. When I reached the kitchen, I saw Roger standing in front of the fridge, staring at it. He looked at me as I thumped my suitcase onto the landing.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, then immediately wondered why I’d just started talking like a cowboy. I pulled the suitcase toward the door and glanced back at Roger in the kitchen. He was back to looking at the refrigerator, which gave me a moment to study him undetected. He was tall, and the kitchen, which had been so quiet and still lately, seemed filled up with his presence. My mother had told me that he was nineteen and that he’d just finished his freshman year. But there was something about him that made him seem older than that—or at least made me feel young. Maybe it was the hand shaking.

“These are incredible,” Roger said, pointing at the refrigerator.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, crossing into the kitchen, knowing he was talking about the magnets. The fridge was covered with them, many more than were needed to hold up Classic Thai takeout menus and grocery lists. They were all from different places—cities, states, countries. My parents had started collecting them on their honeymoon, and they’d kept it up until a few months ago, when my mother spoke at a conference in Montana and came back with a magnet that was just a square of bright blue with BIG SKY COUNTRY printed on it.

“My parents—” I heard my voice catch a little on the word. Words I’d always taken for granted had turned into landmines, traps for me to stumble over and fall into. I saw that Roger had averted his eyes to the fridge, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything. “They, um,” I continued after a moment, “collected them. From all the places they’d been.”

“Wow,” he said, stepping back and taking in the whole fridge, as though it was a piece of art. “Well, it’s impressive. I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“Really,” he said, eyes still on the fridge. “Only California and Colorado. Pretty lame, huh?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve barely been out of California.” This was incredibly embarrassing, something I had told nobody except Julia. I’d been out of the country once—we’d all spent a very damp summer in the Cotswolds, in England, while my mother did research for a book. But California was the only state I’d ever been in. Whenever I had complained about this, my mother had told me that once we’d seen all there was to see in California, we could move on to the other states.

“You too?” Roger smiled at me, and as though it was an automatic reaction, I looked down at my feet. “Well, that makes me feel a little better. The way I justify it is that California’s a pretty big state, right? It’d be worse if I’d never been out of New Jersey or something.”

“I thought,” I started, then regretted saying anything. It wasn’t like I really wanted to know the answer, so why had I started to ask the question? But I couldn’t just leave that out there, so I cleared my throat and continued. “I mean, I thought my mother said your father lived in Philadelphia. And that’s why you’re, um, doing this.”

“He does,” said Roger. “I’ve just never been out there before. He comes out here a couple times a year, for business.”

“Oh,” I said. I glanced up at him and saw that he was still looking at the fridge. As I watched, his face changed, and I knew he’d seen the program, the one held up by the ITHACA IS GORGES! magnet in the lower left corner. The program I tried to avoid looking at—without success—every time I opened the fridge, but hadn’t actually done anything about, like removing it or anything.

It was printed on beige card stock and had a picture of my father on the front, one that someone had taken of him teaching. It was in black and white, but I could tell that he was wearing the tie I’d gotten him last Father’s Day, the one with tiny hound dogs on it. He had chalk dust on his hands and was looking to the left of the camera, laughing. Underneath the picture was printed BENJAMIN CURRY: A LIFE WELL-LIVED.

Roger looked over at me, and I knew that he was about to say a variation on the same sentence I’d been hearing for the past three months. How sorry he was. What a tragedy it was. How he didn’t know what to say. And I just didn’t want to hear it. None of the words helped at all, and it’s not like he could have possibly understood.

“We should get going,” I said before he could say anything. I grabbed my suitcase by the top handle, but before I could lift it, Roger was standing next to me, hoisting it with ease.

“I got it,” he said, carrying it out the front door. “Meet you at the car.” The door slammed, and I looked around the kitchen, wondering what else I could do to delay the moment when it would just be the two of us, trapped in a car for four days. I picked up the plate from where I’d left it to dry in the empty dishwasher, put it in the cupboard, and closed the door. I was about to leave when I saw the travel book sitting on the counter.

I could have just left it there. But I didn’t. I picked it up and, on impulse, pulled the program out from behind the Ithaca magnet and stuck it in the scrapbook section. Then I turned out the kitchen lights, walked out the front door, and locked it behind me.