I pulled the scrunchie off the gear shift. A piece of her blond hair was tangled up in it.

I had wasted a year barely talking to her, and now she was gone forever. I’d never get that time back. I’d never get the chance to tell her how sorry I was, that I’d made a terrible mistake.

Maybe moving so far away had been a mistake, too. After high school, all I could think of was how I didn’t want to get trapped by Lexie. It was too easy to get caught up in her chaos, to come running every time she had a crisis, to jump in and try to fix her messes for her. I only applied to colleges on the West Coast, telling everyone I wanted a change of scenery. I’m sure Lexie knew the truth. She knew me better than I knew myself.

I sank back in the leather bucket seat and sobbed. I screamed and pounded the steering wheel, hating myself, hating life for being so fucked up and unfair, hating my sister for finally leaving me for good. When I was emptied out, my chest hollow, my body drained, my eyes swollen, I turned on the ignition. Music blasted out from the oldies station. I shut it off, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and pulled out of the driveway and through the tiny center of Brandenburg, passing the Blue Heron Bakery, the general store, and the post office. I drove by the turnoff for Meadow Road that led out to Lake Wilmore. I crossed the train tracks where Lexie and I used to place pennies, letting the old freight cars crush them, turning them into flattened bits of copper that we pretended were gold.

There was no GPS in the car, and no maps, but I knew the way. It all came back easily. My sister’s car purred along, handling so much better than the crappy old Honda I was used to driving, as I followed the two-lane roads and passed farms, cows, houses set back from the road with peeling paint and angry-looking dogs in the yard. I opened the sunroof and the air smelled green and alive; fresh-cut grass and warm leaves reaching up to touch the sun.

I turned the radio back on and cranked the volume, listening to the music I always teased my sister for loving: Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Fats Domino.

I drove the back roads until I came to a Sunoco gas station just before the highway on-ramp. I stopped to fill up the tank—Lexie was famous for running on fumes and rarely kept more than a quarter-tank of gas—then shifted to fifth gear and cruised along Interstate 93. In my peripheral vision, I was sure I caught a glimpse of her in the passenger seat. Why don’t you open her up and see what she can really do?

The speedometer hit eighty-seven before I stopped myself, tapping the brakes. I felt my sister rolling her eyes beside me.

“Shut up,” I said out loud.

Great. Now I was talking to ghosts.

On the radio, a song I didn’t recognize came on, the artist cheerily promising, “Like a rubber ball, I’ll come bouncing back to you.”

I took the exit for the airport and followed the signs to arrivals. Immediately recognizable by his Greek fisherman’s cap and gaudy Hawaiian shirt, my father was standing outside the terminal waiting for me, a small duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

I pulled up and got out of the car.

He looked older than he had the last time I’d seen him, and he’d gotten skinnier. His hair had been cut recently, and his beard was neatly trimmed.

“Jax,” he said, enveloping me in a hug. Lexie had started calling me Jax back when we were kids, so our names would match. It’d never caught on with Mom and Gram, but my father took to it, called us “The X girls.” “Oh Jesus, Jax.” He squeezed me tighter. He smelled like gin and Aqua Velva, a combo that melted me in a deep, primal way, and brought me right back to piggyback rides and scratchy daddy kisses. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“I know,” I said, squeezing back, feeling like I was hugging a skeleton. Ted had always been a little on the thin side, but this was concerning. “Come on, let’s get you to Sparrow Crest.”

“Can we stop for a bite on the way?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. But when I pulled into a McDonald’s drive-through ten minutes later, he shook his head.

“There’s a Mexican place down there,” he said, pointing to a giant neon margarita glass flashing in the window. His hands trembled slightly; it wasn’t food he wanted. I hesitated, thought of what Diane said: He’s never going to change. I could have tried to put off the inevitable by pulling into the drive-through and getting him a burger and fries, but he’d find a drink with or without my help. I resolved that, on this trip, I wasn’t going to be the booze police. The last thing I wanted to do was pass judgment; I’d done that with my sister and look where it led me.

I pointed the Mustang toward the Mexican restaurant.

The place was nearly empty—it was only a little after eleven, too early for the lunch crowd—and decorated with piñatas, fake cactuses, walls made to look like adobe. Mexican music, heavy on the horns, played from speakers in the ceiling. We got a table in the back corner, and my father ordered us both house margaritas before I’d touched a menu.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, Jax, Lexie whispered in my ear.

“I’ve gotta drive,” I reminded him.

The drinks came, and he took them both. I bit my tongue and said nothing. Still, he waved his hand, pooh-poohing me. “These are mostly sugar water. I need fortification before going to that god-awful house.”

He hated Sparrow Crest, or as he called it, “Dracula’s castle.” He loathed it even though he and Mom had been married there, in the gardens. The story I heard later was that Ted wanted to elope, but Gram had insisted, so in the end, Dracula’s castle it was.

“Imagine it, loves,” he said, telling Lex and me the story when we were little. “The organ playing, sounding more like a funeral march than ‘Here Comes the Bride,’ the bats swooping down from the belfry.”

“There were no bats, Ted,” Mom corrected, shaking her head, laughing. “And Sparrow Crest doesn’t have a belfry.”

“Well, the attic, then. There were too bats, and they came swooping down from the attic, got all tangled up in your mother’s wedding veil. They joined up with the spiders and the ghosts, and the vampires—never have there been such strange guests at a wedding. I won’t even tell you what happened when it was time to cut the cake!”

I ordered loaded nachos for us to share. I wasn’t hungry, but my father could use something to absorb all the booze. “Have you been sick?” I asked.