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“I want to know how it’s going to be. How I die.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s better to know. I’ll be ready. I’m tired of stumbling around in my own life, clueless.”

I stare at him, unwilling to speak.

“Maybe you could start by telling me when,” he says gently.

“New Year’s Eve,” I blurt. “There was a party, here . . .”

He nods. “Okay, a party.”

“Everyone was here, all our family, Kimy and Gomez and Charisse, the Kendricks, Mama’s art friends, Celia, Ben, everybody.”

“A big send-off.”

“We had been cooking and cleaning for days. I was excited, it was the first time I’d ever stayed up till midnight on purpose. I spent the evening with Nadia, we were running around playing hide-and-seek with Colin. I remember looking out my bedroom window and seeing you outside in the snow with Gomez.”

“In my wheelchair?”

“No, he was carrying you on his back. It was so strange, it stuck in my mind.”

“What else?”

“It was close to midnight—we were all standing in the living room, everyone counting down and saying happy New Year and kissing. I couldn’t find you or Mama, and then I saw Mama sitting by herself on the front porch in the cold.”

“By herself?”

“She told me later that you had been sitting out there with her, saying goodbye. But then you were gone.”

“I can guess where I went,” Dad says.

“You can? We never knew, though Mama guessed, later.”

“Clare knows. I went to a day when she was thirteen, in 1984. It was a cold autumn day, in the Meadow behind your grandpa’s house in South Haven.”

“The Meadow?”

“Yeah. Near the clearing, but not in it.”

“You were shot.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“There was no bullet.”

“There wouldn’t be.”

I close my eyes and remember. “There was blood. We didn’t understand what had happened. Gomez called the police.”

“Not an ambulance?”

“No, but they came anyway.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You said you loved . . .” I cannot continue. Dad gives me his hand and we sit for a long while, holding hands.