After he’s left, I trail down the hallway to Esme’s room with my tray. I knock before opening the door with some difficulty because of the crutch hanging from my arm.

My sister is sitting up in bed, eating an identical dinner of grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, off my mom’s tray with the poppies on it. Her hair is scraped back and she has no makeup on, and she moves her legs slightly so that I can slip onto the foot of her bed like she used to sit on mine when we were kids. The walls of her bedroom are covered with posters of boy bands and Olympic ice-skaters, and there is a framed photo of the four of us at Disneyland on her bedside table. I wonder if I’d been in her bedroom before I left, whether I would have realized how young she still is and have spoken to Mom about what she told me. I like to think it would have changed things, but it probably wouldn’t.

“Do you wish you’d killed him?” Esme asks before I’ve swallowed my first mouthful.

“I don’t know,” I say, trying not to lie to her anymore.

“They said that if you’d crashed in the tunnel, you would have both been killed instantly,” Esme says, pretending not to look at me.

“I really didn’t think it through that much,” I say, and she lets out a snort.

“It’s still raining,” I say, and Esme ignores me, dipping the corner of her sandwich into the soup. “Do you want to talk about what happened at the party?”

“No,” Esme says through a mouthful of cheese. “I guess it’s like you told me, sometimes the bad guys were always supposed to win.”

“When I found you, Esme, were you . . . trying to hurt yourself?” I ask, because I have to.

“I don’t know,” Esme says quietly, taking her mood ring off and turning it over in her fingers. “I don’t think so. I just wanted to feel anything, I guess.”

“I’m so fucking sorry. I should have stopped you from going to that party.”

“It’s okay,” Esme says.

“It’s really not,” I say. “I messed up.”

“Why are you making this about you?” Esme asks, rolling her eyes.

“Because I’m your sister,” I say, and I wipe at my eyes roughly with my sleeve, embarrassed. “And I’m an adult and I let you down.”

“Well, you’re not exactly an adult,” Esme says, shifting a little next to me. “Remember you froze in time when you became famous. So you’re actually younger than me.”

I smile gratefully at her, and she concentrates on her food for a moment.

“I did catch their setup on camera,” Esme says dully, after a moment. “They said some pretty enlightening things about me. Really pushed the English language to its limits.”

I turn to her, something snapping in my chest. “Can I kill them? I will literally kill them if you just say the word. I’ve got money, I can pay someone to do it.”

Esme looks at me like I’m completely and hopelessly insane, and for just a moment, everything slots perfectly back into how it always was. The moment only passes when I remember that it’s raining outside, and that everything has changed, and that Esme and I will probably always have the scars to prove it, visible or not.

“I’m so sorry. They’re cretins.”

Esme closes her eyes.

“At least you can use that footage for the movie,” I say.

She opens her eyes for a brief moment before closing them again.

“There is no movie.”

“What do you mean? Of course there’s a movie,” I say slowly.

“There is not going to be a movie,” Esme repeats. Then she raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to the awards?”

I shrug, but after a moment I shake my head because I don’t want to lie to her again.

“See? It’s over. All of it,” she says, just before she closes her eyes.

I think she’s fallen asleep when Esme speaks again, softly. “Grace?”

“I’m here,” I say.

“Your apology wasn’t entirely horrible. I think you could be growing up,” she says, and there is a faint shadow of a smile on her face.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

So you were just swimming,” my mother says, frowning at my sister and me over a breakfast of Lucky Charms with diced strawberries.

“I was just swimming,” Esme says authoritatively.

“In the torrential rain.”

“In the torrential rain,” Esme repeats.

“Like your sister was just driving off a mountain on Christmas Eve.”

My sister and I exchange a look. I swallow a mouthful of milky, powdered chemicals.

“Just like that,” I say, shrugging.

“I don’t know how we raised two such thrill seekers,” my dad says, pouring more cereal into Esme’s bowl, “when I’ve never even smoked a cigarette.”

There is a long moment of silence before Esme and I start to laugh, and it’s the kind of laughter that comes after a funeral, loud and grateful, checking you’re still alive. While I’m laughing, I have this strange notion that one day we might discover how to stretch time, and if we do, I would be happy to just live this one little moment over and over again.

“Will you be staying over again tonight, Grace?” my mom asks, once we’ve stopped laughing.

“I don’t know,” I say, looking down at my hands. “I should probably get back for . . .”

“Nothing?” Esme says, staring me down.

“I guess nothing.”

* * *

? ? ?

I find my dad in the kitchen later, preparing lunch. He’s standing in front of the oven, frowning down at a stick of homemade garlic bread. The outside of the loaf is dark and crispy, but there is a hard lump of butter stuck in between each groove he has made in the baguette.

“The butter won’t melt,” he says, looking up at me.

“I think you set it to broil instead of bake,” I say, switching it over. My dad smiles gratefully and I sit on the chair by the window, stretching my bad leg out in front of me.

“Why didn’t you guys ever make friends here?” I ask.

My dad breaks the baguette into smaller sections and then puts it back into the oven, burning his hand on the way out. I hear his skin fizzle, but he doesn’t even make a noise. He just walks over to the sink and runs his hand under the cold water.

“We were at a different stage when we moved here; it gets harder to meet people as you get older. Neither of you were at school in the area, and we couldn’t work at first because of the visas, then your mother just never started up again.” He shrugs. “You know she doesn’t like many people anyway.”

“How’s she doing?” I ask. “Current drama aside.”

“Good, actually. She’s started Pilates classes with one of the neighbors. Joined the local theater company against all the odds.”

“Is she eating more?” I ask my dad.

“A little more,” he says, shrugging.

“We’re all going to be okay,” I say, even though we both know that I have no idea.

“She was upset when you didn’t call,” my dad says, moving his hand from under the tap to open a can of tomatoes. “We both were.”

“It was only six weeks,” I say, but of course I’m aware that I’m in the wrong. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We never asked you and your sister to be perfect, but we do need to figure out how we can rub along together as a family. Keep talking, keep moving forward,” he says, emptying the can into a saucepan. “I know it’s not easy coming home.”

He starts to messily chop an onion. It’s the opposite of watching Emilia cook with her measured movements, each piece of onion precisely the same size and shape as the one next to it. I try not to pull a face when he squeezes a generous portion of tomato ketchup on top of the chopped tomatoes.

“You know I sometimes catch your mother in here sneaking chocolate and cakes, so maybe it’s just my cooking she doesn’t like,” he says, smiling, and then he puts the knife down and stares at the pile of different-sized onion pieces in front of him.

“I hate cooking,” he says after a moment, more to himself than to me, and, as I watch him pick the knife back up to start chopping again, I feel a surge of love for him that nearly knocks me over with its force.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

After lunch, I tell my parents that I’m going out for a couple of hours. I hobble to the Ralphs at the end of their street in the rain, my face slick with sweat by the time I reach it. I collect the ingredients I need as quickly and economically as I can, scanning the signs in between the aisles carefully before I commit to anything. Once I’ve paid, I slowly make my way back to my parents’ house. When I get there I sit on the porch for five minutes, until all signs of pain are erased from my face, and then I let myself in and join my mom and Esme on the sofa.

We all watch a made-for-TV movie together, and I try to focus on the awful storyline without thinking about Emilia’s fictional vets falling in love with cowboys in Montana. If I stop to think about it, I might have to admit how hurt I am that she hasn’t been in touch. I should have known she wouldn’t believe me for long.

When I see my dad stand up to head into the kitchen, I stop him.

“I can make dinner tonight . . . if you want.”

My parents and sister stare at me as if I’ve just offered to raise, kill and roast a suckling pig for them for dinner with my bare hands.