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so strong that I had to stop and close my eyes. I breathed deeply a few times, telling myself not to panic. When I opened my eyes, Zoe was standing in front of me.
    “Are you okay?”
    “No. Have you seen Diana? I can’t find her.”
    “We will. Come on, she’s got to be here.” She took my hand and we walked together. Later, when my mind cleared, I thought, How kind of her. Zoe had had her own nightmare only minutes before. Yet here she was, holding my hand and helping when she could just as well have been shut off in her own pain from meeting Kevin Hamilton.
    “There! Over there.”
    Unlike so many others at the reunion, Diana Wise looked almost exactly as she had when we were in school. Interesting face, long black hair, the sexy smile of an Italian movie star. We had been almost-friends in high school, but she was so much maturer than we that we had always held her in awe.
    “Diana?” She was talking to a man I didn’t recognize. Hearing her name, she turned and saw me. Touching the guy on the hand as a good-bye, she took me by the arm.
    “Miranda. I’ve been looking for you.” Her voice was strong and assured. The expression on her face said she knew what I needed. I was grateful not to have to ask the question. Not to have to say the words out loud, into the world: Is it true? Is he really dead?
    The three of us walked through the lobby back out into the summer evening. It was warm and beautiful, the air still heavy from the day and full of the voluptuous smell of honeysuckle. I was empty and scared. I knew what was coming. Even though answers were what I wanted, I knew that when I heard them there would be no way back to a part of my life that, until a few hours before, was still intact.
    “Diana, what happened to James? How did it…” I couldn’t say any more.
    She put a hand into her long black hair and drew it slowly away from her face. “I bumped into him a few years ago in Philadelphia. He was working for a company that had something to do with art—selling it, dealing it? I don’t really remember. Maybe it was an auction house, like Sotheby’s. Anyway, we ran into each other on the street. He loved what he was doing. He was so revved up. Remember how excited he could get about things?”
    I wanted to tell her how I’d seen that excitement, seen his whole being glow about something that had grabbed his attention.
    “We were both in a rush and only able to have a quick cup of coffee together. He sounded wonderful, Miranda. Said for the first time in his life he felt like he was on the right track. Things were where he wanted them. He had a girlfriend. He was absolutely up, you know?”
    “How did he look?” I wanted a picture, an image of him grown up I could hold on to.
    “Older of course, thinner than he was in school, but still those great eyes and smile.” She paused. “He looked like James.”
    I began to weep. Those words held everything I did and did not want to hear. Zoe put her arms around me. The three of us stood on the lawn, a few feet—and light-years away from all the happiness and goodwill inside the building.
    When my storm had mostly passed, I asked Diana to go on.
    “We exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch. We called a couple of times but I didn’t go back to Philadelphia, and who ever comes to Kalamazoo?
    “One night three years ago, very late, I got a call. A woman asked for me two times. She was so upset that I had to convince her who I was. She said she knew I was a good friend of James’s and wanted me to know he’d been killed in a car accident.
    “He’d been in New York and gotten a call from his girlfriend in Philadelphia. She wanted to break up with him because she’d met someone else. Apparently she was that cold—wanted out and there was nothing more to talk about.
    “As soon as he got off the phone, James jumped in his car and drove straight down there. It was very icy and the roads were bad. He made it to Philadelphia but was driving