Does Billy remember any of that? Sometimes, I confess, it is slipping away from me, too. Sometimes, I forget what it was like to be around you, what it was like to have a sister. I am becoming less and less your sister. But it helps when Mom puts out the potato salad. It helps to see Mom acting like this is the most normal dinner in the world.

  “Sally,” Mom says, “get the place mats. Billy, get us four plates.”

  He stands. Billy is tall in a way I never expect. When I see him stand up, I think, Who is this big man? This is Bill, and I’m struck by Bill’s body. A working man’s body. No longer the basketball player who lifted weights in the gym. But more like a tall oak tree. A lean and muscular body, from a different time period, when men grew only the muscles that they needed.

  Or maybe it’s true what Valerie said once: People start to look like their jobs. Valerie looks more and more like plastic every day. Ray looks like a lawyer, eyebrows furrowed. And Billy, he looks like he could stand entirely alone in a forest and live forever like that. When he carries the plates over to the dinner table, I watch, just to make sure he doesn’t drop them, and I have no idea why I expect him to.

  Please don’t drop them, I think. Mom and Dad are so close to forgiving you. I feel them, softening.

  He doesn’t drop them. He places them down gently on the table.

  “Someone should turn off the TV,” Mom says.

  On TV, there are boys running into the water in New York. They are greeting you with their chests. They are not afraid.

  “Idiots,” Dad says.

  The weatherman is gesturing wildly on the beach, which at the moment is just a “regular beach.” He points to the “regular clouds,” which he says will soon become very ominous-looking ones.

  “I wonder how much money he gets for standing out there, telling us what a beach looks like,” I say.

  “This is like the weatherman’s Super Bowl,” Billy says. “His World Series. Look at him. Look how excited he is.”

  Dad turns off the TV.

  “Well,” Mom says over the table of red shells. “This is certainly unexpected. All of us here.”

  She squeezes Billy’s hand in a way that embarrasses me, but not Billy.

  “Thank you for having me,” Billy says. He smiles at everybody all at once. Somehow, he can do this, speak to an entire group. “I’ve been looking forward to something like this for a very long time.”

  Dad lifts up his beer.

  “To Hurricane Kathy,” he says.

  “To Hurricane Kathy,” we say.

  It’s the first time I’ve heard Dad say your name in years.

  We all take a sip of our drinks. And then the doorbell rings.

  It’s Ray. Ray drove all the way here from New York. “Why?” I ask.

  “You weren’t answering my calls,” he says. “I was worried.”

  “I was busy,” I say.

  “I see,” he says.

  “We’re all fine, Ray,” Mom says.

  “Sit down, Ray,” Dad says. “Have a beer. Have a lobster.”

  Ray gets a beer. He gets a lobster. He sits down. He looks at Billy.

  “I’m sorry, but who are you?” Ray asks.

  I can hear the panic in his voice.

  “This is Kathy’s old boyfriend,” Mom says.

  Mom says it like Ray should know. But, of course, Ray doesn’t know. There are too many things I’ve never told Ray. Billy extends his hand across the table.

  “I’m Bill Barnes,” Billy says. “I run the Tree and Garden down on Main.”

  Like that means something to Ray.

  “We’ve known Billy for a very long time,” Mom adds.

  This is what Ray knows: You are dead. You died too young, in a car accident, and it was all very upsetting. He knows that whenever I say the words “my sister,” he has to be serious. Wipe the smile off his face. Become extra polite to our mother. Unload the dishwasher while our mother lights the candles on your birthday cake. Our mother, she still makes you a birthday cake, which I’m allowed to find weird, but my fiancé must think is sweet.

  “Let’s eat,” Mom says.

  Mom was the only one who wanted lobster, but she doesn’t remember how to eat lobster. I tell everybody I once wrote a piece on this: “How to Eat a Lobster.” People are very concerned about this. Apparently, it’s a class-based thing.

  “I don’t see what this has to do with class,” Mom says.

  I explain to Mom: When you eat lobster, rip the tail off first. The tail, which is not really the tail. It’s actually the abdomen. What we call the tail is the thing’s entire body. Sever the body from the head, and do this over a plate, because water will come rushing out. Do not be afraid of this water. It’s not the lobster’s blood. It is not the lobster’s life force. It is not the lobster’s soul. It’s the water you used to kill it cook it.

  Some people eat the lobster faster than others. Some have had more practice. Some people will eat the guts and some won’t. For example, Grandpa used to eat the guts, and so we all used to eat the guts, but then Grandpa died of a heart attack and now everybody but Dad stopped eating the guts.

  When Ray eats lobster, he does not stop for breaks. He does not stop to wipe his hands ever. He keeps moving, working the meat, and it is all so continuous and fluid, like it is a song he can’t stop. When he’s done, he settles back in his chair before wiping his hands. He looks around at us, and says, “That was amazing.”

  (He eats the way he fucks, I told Valerie once.)

  (No, Valerie said. He fucks the way he eats. He’s been eating for thirty years. Fucking, presumably for less than that.)

  After, Ray breathes a heavy sigh.

  “So,” he says. He looks at Billy. He can’t stop looking at Billy. “What’s with the tattoo?”

  “What do you mean, what’s with the tattoo?” Billy asks.

  “Were you drunk?” Ray asks.

  “Actually, I was sober,” Billy says. “Very sober. That’s the worst part about it. I wanted this.”

  “Why would you want that?” Dad asks.

  “It’s a reminder,” Billy says.

  “A reminder to never get a real job?” Ray asks.

  “Ray,” I say.

  “It’s just a joke,” he says.

  “That,” Billy says. “But also, a reminder to love. To keep growing.”

  I can tell Ray is trying very hard not to roll his eyes. This is the exact kind of statement that would make Ray go, Oh, come on. But Ray is a guest. And Mom is struck down by the thought of Billy growing. Of Billy loving. She looks like she is about to cry, but she doesn’t.

  “Sounds like a cry for help to me,” Dad says.

  Billy laughs. “Yes, it’s certainly that, too.”

  “I think it’s nice,” Mom says.

  “It’s not nice, Susan,” Dad says. “It’s a neck tattoo.”

  Billy smiles at me. Billy seems to like it, this teasing. This having an annoying family thing.

  “I always wanted to get a tattoo,” Mom says.

  “You did not want to get a tattoo,” Dad says.

  “A tattoo of what?” Billy asks.

  “Nothing crazy,” Mom says. “Just something small. A little heart. On my ankle.”

  After, Billy offers to do the dishes, because Mom still doesn’t trust her own dishwasher (It’s from 1981! she says). But Mom says, No. You’ve done enough. You should go home, before the storm hits. And so we all say goodbye and good luck and please stay off the roads.

  * * *

  Upstairs, in our bathroom, I pull down my pants and it is like something has melted from inside of me. Like those cherry lollipops we used to get for free at the bank, the ones they’d put out in a bowl to thank us for doing chores with our mother. I am not pregnant—not like I expected to be. But still. Every month, it is a relief to me.

  I go back to our bedroom, where Ray is sitting.

  “That was odd,” he says.

  “What was odd?”

  “Dinner.”

  “What was odd about it?”

  “There was tension.”

  “Well, it’s kind of a tense situation,” I say. “Billy was driving when my sister died.”

  “He was?” Ray asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Oh,” he says. “Maybe that was it then.”

  There is a huge clap of thunder, so I turn on the TV in our bedroom to see you are a big sprawling thing, headed into Connecticut. When the weatherman speaks of you, he speaks of your strong center, your eye. Yet when I really look at the eye, it doesn’t look like a center. You look warm and curled into yourself, like something afraid. You just appear to have a core, a place, a thing that we have always called Kathy. Is that a center?

  “A stupid thing to say, but as a kid, I used to feel left out of American storms,” Ray says.

  He was so close to them but grew up in Toronto and never got to feel the brunt of them.

  “I used to be afraid of them, too,” I say.

  Ray starts flipping through the pages of an outdated Time magazine. A terrorist plot, already thwarted. A vegetable that is known to prevent heart disease now gives people liver cancer. And will Donald Trump run for president?

  “No,” Ray says. “The fucker never runs. Why does everybody always think he will?”

  Ray tosses the magazine, like he’s done with the news, done with the world, and there is something to be said for people like Ray, who drive forward in conversation when no one else knows where to go.

  “But actually, no,” Ray says. “That’s not it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, that man is clearly in love with you,” he says.

  “He’s not, trust me,” I say.

  “I know tension like that when I feel it,” Ray says. “I’m a lawyer.”

  “What does being a lawyer have to do with anything?”

  “I’m trained to know when people are hiding something,” Ray says. “I can see it on your face. Right now.”

  I don’t say anything. The rain begins outside.

  “I’m going to grab another beer,” he says, defeated.

  “Don’t have a beer,” I say. “We should go to bed.”

  “I have a theory about people who say ‘you should,’” Ray says. “‘You should do this,’ ‘you should read this,’ are people who don’t know how to say, ‘This is my favorite book’ without saying the word should.”

  I nod. Ray sighs.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me. I can feel it,” Ray says.

  “There are a lot of things I’m not telling you,” I say.

  “Try then,” he says.

  “Billy and I became very close after my sister died,” I say. “We were in love, I think.”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell me that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Because you still love him,” he says. “Is that what this is all about? Not wanting kids?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Ray goes to get his beer, and the storm picks up. I can hear the house shift, ever so slightly. It’s a chorus of weather. The high notes of wind against the bass of thunder. Ray comes back with his beer and pretends to play a bass line to accompany the howling wind. He pretends like everything is fine, and so do I.

  I light a lavender candle before the power goes out. Just like Dad. There is a clap of thunder, and Ray shouts, “Yeehaw!” like a cowboy from one of Dad’s old movies. We get onto the bed, curl up with excitement like two teenagers doing something they shouldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m being jealous.”

  Ray kisses me, slow and sweet, like he is getting to know me all over again. He makes sure to look me in the eye, so I know that this is a moment; he is getting closer to me, which is all he wants, he keeps saying. He wants to get closer and closer and closer until what?

  “You look like you’re going to eat me,” I say.

  “Maybe,” he says. “You’re kind of cute.”

  Ray is not the type to be so committed to one woman; he has told me this on a number of occasions. There’s something about you, he says, that makes me want nothing but you, and I smile and laugh, like he’s crazy to be in love with me, which I know he is. But I realize this night that there is something else. There is something deeply wrong with me. There is a dark hole inside of me, where you used to be; it’s the space where I live now. It’s soundless and windless and without gravity, and from here, I can see everything. From here, I look back out at the world, at all the regular people, like Ray, living their life so easily. Ray who wants a family with me. Sometimes, when I watch Ray cook dinner or wipe down the counters, I am watching him from afar, and it’s like he knows this. He knows there is a distance he needs to travel, a space inside me he is trying to crawl into, and he likes this challenge.

  Ray runs marathons.

  Ray wants the things he cannot have, like a successful music career. He idolizes the things farthest from him, and right now, the thing farthest from him is me.

  But tonight he is getting closer to that space where only you and I live, and it reminds me of old times, not with Ray but with other men. In college, when I got drunk a lot, because that was the only time I felt comfortable crying. Sober, I tried not to let myself do it. I convinced myself that my grief over you was the ugliest part about me. But Jan was right; grief gets stored in the body. It rots over time. And so I drank, because when I drank I had no control, no sense of myself, and the grief would spill out onto the bed. I would cry, heave, hyperventilate. The boy—whoever he was—would wipe my tears and kiss me, and say, Sorry. So sorry for your loss.

  But Ray does not say that. Ray says, “Let’s just go to sleep,” and then, in a matter of minutes, Ray actually falls asleep.

  But I can’t sleep. I listen to our house shake in the wind, the windows. Windows and doors, they are the weakest parts of a house. It is through those spaces where you gain and lose the most. It is through those spaces where nothing and everything exist.

  Are you awake? Billy texts.

  Yes, I write. I am.

  I’m coming over, Billy writes. I need to talk with you.

  I can still hear the mayor on television. The mayor has said good night and good luck. Right now is the part of the storm where nobody is responding yet. The state has declared a state of emergency, but it is the quietest night I’ve had in a while. No sirens. No screams from the street. No fireworks. There is no indication of man, or that there ever was man, outside our windows. It is purely weather hitting against more weather. Weather trying to get inside. That seems to be all you want, to get back inside the house, through the cracks. The weather has no place to live because we have sealed the windows shut.

  But then I open the door.

  And there, outside in the storm, is Billy. If you could have seen him like that, out there in the rain, just standing in our driveway, looking up at the sky, you would have fallen in love with him all over again. I know it.

  “What are you doing?” I shout at him.

  But he can’t hear me. He can’t even see me yet. So I run outside to join him.

  “You’re crazy,” I tell Billy when I stand next to him in the driveway, crazy for driving through a hurricane like this, but I don’t really mean it. I know that these are the kinds of things you do when you’re in love. Love is crazy. Love turns you into something you’re not, or something you never knew you could be. It makes a man drive down the highway in the middle of a hurricane. It makes me run outside to feel the dirt in your rain. The strength of your wind.

  “I just wanted to see you,” he says. “I wanted to tell you that I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I say.

  He takes my hand.

  “I know I’m not supposed to,” he says. “And if your sister wants to kill me because of it, that seems fair. It seems only fair to give her the chance.”

  He opens his arms wide, as if to welcome you. I look around the yard. There are a million dangers present; anything can be ripped from the ground and kill us. There are street signs, old trees. In this kind of wind, everything ordinary becomes dangerous.

  But then the wind ceases. The rain stops. Your eye is upon us. And I wonder what you see at this hour, with the clarity of your forty-mile-wide eye. I wonder what the top of our roof looks like. What our town looks like. I wonder if you see only the stillness of the trees, and the two of us, standing side by side, holding hands. Can you recognize us? Are you wondering why we are so wet? Maybe you are thinking this is a perfect picture, a perfect day. Maybe you are seeing Billy as I see him. He is wet in the face. He is smiling. His sweater is soaked, and I can see his fine bones through the cotton, and I know that I will love him forever.

  * * *

  In the morning, when the power comes back on, the weatherman cuts through our house and wakes us all up. From my bed, I can hear him announcing what will happen to you: You will go north. You will become a tropical storm. You will make it all the way to Labrador, and that is where you will come apart. That is where your winds will spread over the ocean until you are no longer Kathy, until you are only air.

  But you will return to us, I know. When we are repainting the house or making pancakes for breakfast or digging in the garden or laughing at something funny with our heads back and our mouths wide open—the way you always laughed—we will breathe you in without even knowing it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my agents, Molly Friedrich and Lucy Carson, and the whole team at the Friedrich Agency for reading draft after draft of this novel. I feel so fortunate to have found agents who I trust completely with all aspects of the writing process and business—you are amazing readers, wonderful editors, phenomenal agents, and good friends.

  Thank you to my editor, Caroline Zancan. You understood this novel from the very start, and your editorial vision helped me see what it could be (and helped me end my chapters). I’m so grateful for your wit, your humor, and your enthusiasm for the absurd. And thank you to everybody else at Henry Holt who put time and energy into designing, selling, and shaping this book.