“Don’t be a stick in the mud, Jax. Lexie would want me to have it.”

Her phone kept making an assortment of sounds: a locomotive, songs, crickets chirping, an old-fashioned car horn, a regular ringtone. She ignored them all.

“Do you have a different sound for each girlfriend?” I joked.

“Very funny,” she said.

“How come you’re not answering any of them?” I asked. Her phone chirped again.

She switched her phone to silent and stuck it in her back pocket. “Now where the hell did the broom go?” she asked, wandering off.

We picked up and put away flashlights, extension cords, kitchen knives, the diving mask and snorkel, a hammer. Every strange item we found got held up and stared at, wondered over like an archeological find. An unopened bag of previously frozen peas under the couch. An enormous pipe wrench on the kitchen table. An old Coleman camping lantern and some tent stakes in the bathtub. The board game Lex and I had played so many times in childhood—Snakes and Ladders. I took the lid off, and there, just as I’d remembered, was Rita’s name along with the crayon drawing she’d made. A stick figure girl in a blue dress with pale yellow hair. Underneath, it read: Martha W. 7 years old.

Beside the game was a photo of Ryan, Lexie, me, Gram, Terri, Randy, Shirley, and Aunt Diane all sitting around the pool. I showed it to Aunt Diane.

“Ralph must have taken it.”

“How is Ralph?” Although they’d been divorced for over a decade, they’d remained friends.

“He’s well. Still with Emily. He’s talking about early retirement. Moving down to Florida. He’s done with the winters here.”

I looked down at the photo—Lexie in faded cut-offs and a Nike T-shirt. Curly-haired Ryan squinting into the camera because he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Lexie had teased him about them, so he rarely wore them when he was around her.

“Do you remember when Lexie thought she’d seen a peacock in the woods?” I asked, thinking this might be a photo from that very day.

“Yes!” Diane laughed. “She and Ryan made all those ridiculous traps trying to catch it! It’s a wonder we didn’t get sued by some poor hiker falling into a pit trap!”

“What’s Ryan up to these days? Isn’t he married? Kids?”

“Divorced now,” Aunt Diane said. “No kids. He came up last summer to help his parents with the bakery when Terri got diagnosed with MS. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but I think he’s here to stay. He’s pretty much running things now.”

“I’ll have to stop in and see him,” I said.

“He’d like that. He and Terri would both love to see you, I’m sure.”

Nodding, I gathered all the papers and photographs. “Should we try to organize any of it now?” I asked. “Like photos in one and journal pages in another? I thought I’d pick up some binders and arrange her journal entries as best I could by date.” Spick and span, Jax. Spick and span!

She shook her head. “Let’s just get it all into boxes and go through them later.”

I flipped through Lexie’s journal entries again, then stopped:

May 16:

I bet Mom could have been saved by the pool. I remember when she got sick, Gram encouraged her to come out and swim, or even just take a jar home. But Mom refused. Even though I think she knew it might actually help. She hated the pool that much. And she understood that if it did make her well, there would be a price to pay. As Gram always said, “The water gives and the water takes.”

I held the journal entry in my hands, rereading it, my tears dripping down onto the page. Diane gently touched my arm.

“Don’t go through that now, Jackie. Just box it all up. We can read through everything later.”

* * *

By nightfall, Diane and I collapsed exhausted on the couch, eating Chinese takeout and sharing a bottle of Malbec. Diane had suggested that we go out to dinner, leave Sparrow Crest, but I was too tired and filthy and couldn’t face going out.

“You’re coming back to my place tonight,” she said. “No arguments.”

I shook my head.

“A hotel, then,” Diane insisted.

“I’m fine here, really.”

“Jackie, I don’t think—”

“And besides,” I interrupted, “it’s all cleaned up now. The place looks great.”

Diane sank back in the couch, taking a long sip of wine and looking around at the cleared and scrubbed floors and furniture.

“This is how I remember it,” I said. “It even smells the same—Gram’s lemon wood polish.”

“It’s like Lex was never here. We’ve taken every sign of her and boxed it up, thrown it away. It’s like we’ve erased her.” She looked so devastated, so guilty. And was I imagining it or was that accusation in her eyes—like this was what I’d wanted all along?

Pig was curled up on the chair across the room, watching us warily. He’d wolfed down an entire can of the cat food Diane had brought, always keeping a cautious eye on us, never letting us get too close.

“Your father’s flight arrives at eleven tomorrow in Manchester,” Diane said. She stabbed a dumpling with a chopstick. “I can send a car to pick him up.”

“No. I can go get him. I’ll take Lexie’s car. The drive will do me good.”

“I know you and he have your difficulties. It’s a long ride from the airport. Are you sure you want to put yourself through that right now?”

The truth was my father had no difficulties with me. “He’s my father.”

When I’d visited him in Key West two years ago, he took me to the sunset celebration, art galleries, the Hemingway house, and of course, his favorite bars. He introduced me to artists, cops, street performers, and fishermen. We were having a lovely time until I ruined it with my clumsy, yet determined, attempt at an intervention. I sat him down, explained that I believed he was drinking to self-medicate his bipolar disorder, that I was sure his life would really turn around if he’d get on meds, go to therapy, deal with his illness. I pulled out a list I’d made of local treatment centers and hospitals and offered to make some calls.

He was the one who ended up calling: First, he called to reserve me a room at a local motel, then he called a cab to take me there.