“I don’t know. I don’t . . .” Frantically scrambling in the dirt, standing, leaning on Tyler, feeling everything realign, the burn of the hit, the sting of the moment. “I’m okay,” I said. His hands were everywhere. Pushing my hair aside, over my face, down my neck, my arms, my waist. He glanced over my shoulder, his jaw set, and I saw Corinne jogging toward us. Bailey was in the distance, weaving through the crowd.

I didn’t know if Annaleise was still there. I hadn’t looked again. Maybe she was just outside the entrance. Maybe she’d run behind the building, watching through the stable slats that I could see now, with her doelike eyes. Yes, she had confirmed our alibi, but I was wondering if she had also witnessed what came next.

Tyler had pulled me up, checked me again, asking over and over if I was okay. “Wait here,” he’d said. He stood over my brother, put a hand down, and leaned toward him, said something in his ear. Daniel looked straight at me, straight into me, so I had to look away. “Nic,” he pleaded from across the way, but by then Corinne was already there.

“Bailey, go find some ice,” Corinne had called as she approached, and I could feel her presence taking over, taking control.

I’d walked away. I’d left, taking Tyler with me, and we found the first-aid shed where a man sat in a folding chair, a lump of tobacco in the side of his mouth.

“You kids okay?” he asked, not standing.

“Do you have ice?” Tyler asked.

The man opened a blue cooler at his feet, used a plastic cup to scoop some ice into a Ziploc bag for me.

Tyler checked me over again, asked me if I was okay again, his hands running everywhere.

“Tyler,” I said. “Your hand.” Two knuckles were scraped, as if they’d hit the wrong angle on one of Daniel’s sharp edges, and his fingers were discolored. I asked the attendant for Band-Aids.

He eyed Tyler’s hand. “Might be broke,” he said.

“It’s fine,” Tyler said, pulling me away. “Come on.”

But I could see the man was right; it was swelling and red, and Tyler kept it hanging limply by his side.

“Tyler—”

“I’ll take a bag of ice, too,” he mumbled.

“At least go wash it off,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. You won’t move?”

“I’ll be right here,” I said. But the second he was out of sight, all I could picture was Daniel sitting in the dirt, his bloody nose, and the way he said my name. The way he looked at me. I had to talk to him. We had to talk. About this. Right now. Even back then, I could sense how pivotal this moment was. How our entire futures somehow hung in the balance of this conversation.

I’d gone out to the dirt circle to find Daniel, but nobody was there. I thought maybe they’d all been escorted out, or someone had called security on us. I walked past the stables and didn’t see him anywhere in the parking lot, either.

I turned to go back in, back to Tyler, when I heard Corinne’s soft words somewhere out of sight. I passed the stables to my right—her voice, her laughter, drawing me in.

I saw Corinne first. Behind the building just outside the fair, holding a wet paper towel to my brother’s face. Her head on his shoulder. Her other hand under his shirt, at his waistband, trailing over his skin. I watched her gently press her lips to his jaw and whisper something in his ear. And from her posture, from the way my brother was relaxed against the wall, I knew this wasn’t the first time. I knew he saw me because he moved his hands quickly and ineffectively, pushing her off, before I spun away. And I heard her words cut into him in displeasure as he pushed her back. But it was too late.

He lied, and he knows I know it. He knows I lied for him, too. Never, I said. Never.

I wondered if Annaleise saw that. If she was in the trees somewhere. Or crouched between the cars in the parking lot. She was too young to get home on her own. She would have needed an adult. She must’ve been nearby.

I wondered what it looked like to her at the age of thirteen—what did she think was happening from the distance, from her hiding spot? And if she revisited it as an adult, did the memory shift on her? Grow into a different understanding? I had thought I was the only one who knew about Corinne and Daniel, but maybe I wasn’t.

I never knew exactly what happened between the two of them, or with Bailey, after that. I ran back inside, was beside the shed before Tyler came out. We left in his truck, and he let me drive because of his hand, and we passed a bunch of kids from school who teased Tyler. “Damn, letting your girl drive your truck?” A girl added, “Now, that’s true love.”

I didn’t know how Daniel and Corinne got separated, when or how Corinne met up with Jackson, or why Daniel was driving Bailey home. I didn’t dare ask. None of us asked.

* * *

I PEOPLE-WATCHED FROM THE entrance for a long time, trying to imagine how these moments might look through the lens of a camera. What would I see if this moment were frozen? What would I think? Of the mother grabbing the child’s arm, one step from disappearing into the crowd; of the teenagers in line for the Tilt-A-Whirl, kissing while the others looked away; of the woman with long black hair, holding the hand of a little girl, frozen in the middle of the crowd, watching me back.

Her face sharpened in my mind, gaining context, and I was jarred into action, walking toward her. “Bailey?” I called. Bailey. Her face turning away, black hair cascading in an arc as she spun around . . .

It wasn’t in church but in moments like this when I maybe believed in God or something like that. Some order to the chaos, some meaning. That we collide with the people we need, that we meet the ones who will love us, that there’s some underlying reason to everything. Bailey standing in the middle of the fair on the one night I was there. Bailey, whom I hadn’t seen since I graduated from college. Bailey, who had been here with us the night we all fell apart.

My whole body tingled with the feeling that I was meant to be here, that the universe was laying out the pieces for me, that time was showing something to me.

I knew she’d seen me, had frozen just as I had, but she was moving away through the crowd. I was halfway to her now, pushing through the kids running for the next ride.

“Bailey!” I called again.

She stopped when I’d nearly reached her, looked over her shoulder, made herself look surprised to see me. “Nic? Wow. Long time,” she said.

We stared at each other, neither speaking, the little girl still holding her hand. “You have a daughter?” I asked, smiling at the girl. She clung to Bailey’s leg, half her face hidden, one hazel eye staring up at me.

“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, her face tilted up to her mother.