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talked to her, or at least tried. I don’t know if she ever read it. Probably not.
    I take a breath and then one more drink of OJ. She munches on her cereal.
    I screw the cap on slowly and take my time putting the bottle back in the almost empty refrigerator, even though I want to run back into my room and get under my bed with Mr. Cat.
    I close the refrigerator and I can’t see her anymore without the light. It’s like she just disappears, which is what I want to happen. I want her to just vanish.

Chapter 5
    Julia
    48 days
    Â 
    I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, watching the fan spin. My favorite pastime. My only pastime. Light spills from the bathroom into the bedroom. It’s gotten dark out. Ben texted me to say he was going out for a beer with his brothers so it’s just the girls and me. Earlier, I had Izzy order pizza delivery. She brought me two breadsticks and marinara sauce, which I ate, not because I was hungry, but because I could tell she really wanted me to eat it.
    I can hear the TV out in the living room. Izzy. She loves the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. Parents aren’t supposed to rank their children and I try not to, but Izzy is probably the smartest of my three girls. Caitlin and Haley are bright, but Izzy, she’s scary smart.
    Caitlin was bright . . . I can’t get the hang of speaking of her . . . thinking of her in the past tense. It’s just too much to wrap my head around.
    I wonder what Haley’s doing. I haven’t seen her since I picked her up from school yesterday. I know she’s in the house. I heard the toilet in the girls’ bathroom down the hall flush today while Izzy was at school. I saw an empty Coke can in the trash, which I moved to the recycling; Izzy doesn’t drink Coke. She watched something on TV about corn syrup and is boycotting any food or drink that contains corn syrup. She and Caitlin were doing it together. It took forever at the market with the two of them because they insisted on reading every label.
    I hear the sounds of an explosion coming from the TV in the living room. I wonder what Izzy’s watching. I should go see. See how she is. I can’t remember when we last talked about anything other than takeout or lunch money for school. She hasn’t even asked me to sign anything for school; I guess Ben signs her homework now.
    I roll onto my side. It takes a lot of energy to get out of bed. But I know I should. I know I need to. Ben is right. Laney’s right. Even my mother-in-law is right. It’s just that my heart is so broken that I—
    I stop that thought right there because I know that if I don’t . . . I know that if I let that thought unravel, I’ll just lie here and cry some more.
    I exhale and sit up. I perch on the edge of the bed until the dizziness passes. I probably need to eat something more than two breadsticks. Drink something. Maybe some peppermint tea. Caitlin was my tea drinker. Sometimes, on Saturday mornings, before anyone else got up, she and I would sit at the breakfast table in our PJs and drink tea and have rye toast.
    I close my eyes as tears trickle down my cheeks. I’ll never have tea with Caitlin again. We’ll never fight over the heel from the loaf of rye bread from the German bakery we both like. Not ever again.
    There are more explosions coming from the living room, followed by the sound of Izzy’s voice. I wonder whom she’s talking to. I didn’t hear Ben come in. Maybe she’s decided to speak to Haley again. To my knowledge, she hasn’t spoken to her in . . . well, forty-eight days.
    I make myself stand up. I wipe my face with the sleeve of my T-shirt, slip my feet into my flip-flops, and shuffle out into the hall. The house is mostly dark, though I see light coming out from under Haley’s door at the end of the hall. Caitlin’s door is closed and the light is out. Forever extinguished . I turn the other direction and