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notes and put down his pen. “Who’s Steven?”
    â€œGretchen’s boyfriend.”
    â€œAnd who’s Gretchen?”
    â€œMy big sister.”
    â€œI see.” A single strand of tinsel, probably from whatever party he’d been called away from, clung to the front of Officer Bert’s sweater. “Did he only look like Steven, or was it actually him?”
    â€œIt was him.”
    Without taking his eyes off me, his right hand slid to thewalkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “What makes you sure it was Steven? Do you know his last name, sweetie?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œHe doesn’t have all his teeth.” It was the first full sentence Remy had uttered since we’d come upstairs, and once he said it I knew there was no holding back anymore.
    â€œHis tooth is missing.” I opened my mouth and pointed to an incisor.
    â€œHold on one second, sweetie.” He left the room and found my mother, still praying at the front door. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but it’s not hard to guess how it went. Not thirty seconds after Officer Bert walked out, Remy’s mom stepped in with Gretchen and Abby Tickle. They wore matching Billy Idol T-shirts instead of nightgowns. Abby was a little pixie of a thing, so her shirt reached almost past her bowed knees. She was still cute in a girlish way, whereas Gretchen was almost a foot taller and already looked like a woman. Except that she wasn’t; she was seventeen, but I guess that fact was easy to forget.
    My mom lunged toward Gretchen and pulled her into a hug. As they wept in each other’s arms, my mother caressed my sister’s face with strokes that grew increasingly aggressive until before I knew it they became outright slaps—one hard smack followed by another even harder one, at which point Remy’s mom pushed her way between them, but not before my mom yanked out a fistful of Gretchen’s hair.
    â€œThis is your fault. It’s
your
fault.” She pointed a trembling finger at my sister, who huddled between Remy’s mom and Abby.
    I screamed when I saw Gretchen’s hair, which fell to the floor in lazy wisps, and my eyes stung from a fresh gush of tears. I wondered if a person could dry out and die from too much crying. When I tried to stop, the tears continued to flow, silent but steady. Other times I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe. This lasted for days, even while I slept, and continued until there wasn’t a drop left for me to lose. By then I was a husk of myself, dehydrated and exhausted. We all were. I had never been so thirsty in my life.

Chapter Five
    Summer 1996
    My parents are divided on the question of whether I should get a summer job. Dad says no; Mom says yes. She doesn’t want me hanging around the house, doing nothing for three months. I don’t have a driver’s license, and even if I did, my mom needs her car to drive Hannah around most days. Mom wins, as usual, and I get the job of helping Susan Mitchell clean out her family’s basement. Formerly occupied by Susan’s now-deceased mother-in-law, the space is scheduled for some major renovations.
    â€œDo you know what a ‘man cave’ is? My husband wants one.” She sniffs the air in the dim, damp basement. Even though the layout is identical to ours, I can barely tell because of all the stuff crowding the room. “Mold,” Susan announces, wrinkling her nose. “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s a potpourri of mold and mildew down here.We kept a dehumidifier running for Betsy. We never would have put her down here by herself, but she became very paranoid toward the end of her life. You remember her, Sam, don’t you?”
    â€œOf course I do. We called her Grandma Bitty.”
    Susan smiles. “I know. She was a wonderful woman. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother-in-law. But once she developed dementia, she became a whole different person. She was