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happened last night?”
    â€œCooper was at the Bohemian bar. He saw my drunk-as-hell sister. He made her leave. She was mad and grabbed the wheel and made him crash into a tree. That’s what I think happened.”
    He nods.
    â€œYou don’t believe it?” I ask.
    He looks away from me and his gaze settles on a photo of Gwen tacked to the wall. In this picture, she’s twelve years old, laughing and holding a melting Popsicle, her mouth red with its juice.
    â€œWhat do you think happened?” I ask.
    He looks back to me. “I don’t know. I couldn’t even begin to know.”
    â€œMy sister,” I say. “I’ve seen her drunk, of course. I’ve seen her embarrassing and slobbering and giddy. I’ve known nights when I had to fill in her blackouts. I’ve had to sit with her while she got sick. But that was a long, long time ago, and I’ve never, in all those long-ago drunken sloshes, seen her angry or belligerent enough to grab a wheel. She was an emotional drunk, a crier. I can’t believe she’d do this.”
    Max doesn’t answer, but I know he’s listening. With Cooper, I’ve learned to say what needs saying in bite-size pieces.
    â€œShe’s always been the more sensitive of the two of us,” I say to Max. “When we were growing up, she was sad; I was mad. Hardly ever the other way around.” I stare off at the barn doors, closed tight in a feeble attempt to keep the cool air inside. A poster hangs on the back wall, announcing our opening six years before. “Like the time I got in trouble for making up these ten ideas. I was mad, but Willa cried for days. She felt responsible because she’d helped me, which she had, but not that much.”
    The playlist changes and Johnny Cash’s voice cracks open, saturating the air with “I Still Miss Someone.” As he sings those lyrics, the barn doors swoosh open. Francie tosses her purse in the general direction of her chair but misses, and it falls on the floor. She slumps into the same chair. “She’s still asleep.”
    â€œThey said they’ll call me the minute she wakes up,” I say.
    â€œI can’t stand to see her like that.”
    â€œI know. But it’s just swelling. It will get better.” Emotion flares inside me, but I can’t label it, pin it to an exact word. I don’t know how to be both angry with Willa for causing the accident and worried about her recovery. They seem opposite emotions. They are opposite emotions.
    The door opens again and a woman steps into the barn. The three of us look at her as if she’s an apparition, when really it’s just the wedding planner, who needs a new logo, a client with an appointment.
    Francie stands up to greet her and Max leans close to me. “Go see your sister.”
    I nod but then hesitate as I reach the door. It’s always difficult to leave.

 
    four
    The first thing I noticed about Cooper was his walk. He had this way of moving that only those comfortable in their skin can pull off. The other high school boys were tentative and clumsy—all pointy elbows and awkward knees. But not Cooper. He was tall and good-looking, with a touch of the aristocrat about him. You could say that he had the sort of confidence that comes with money. But it wasn’t just that. There was something else that marked him as special. He walked as if his limbs were made of liquid, and his smile—well, it settled on everyone he passed. And everyone made room for him. We moved aside in the cramped hallways so he could get to his locker. We bunched up to make room for him on the bleachers or in the cafeteria. We all saw it. We all did it. We all made room for Cooper.
    No doubt about it, I made room for Cooper, too. He was a junior at Tulane when we met again. I was eighteen years old and working at the local print shop. Cooper’s single-minded pursuit of me was flattering—and