It still didn’t feel right, not picking up the phone. Part of me longed to answer, to reconnect with my sister, to apologize for being such a shit over this past year; to tell her I’d made a terrible mistake.

“Over fifty meters!” Lex was shouting, fast and furious, as I sat sipping my wine.

“Seven yesterday, over fifty today,” Lex said, nearly breathless with frenzy. “Oh, Jax, you’ve gotta call me. No, better yet, you’ve gotta get on a plane. You’ve gotta come see this. Please, Jax! You’re the only one who would understand this!”

She clicked off. Less than a minute later, the phone rang again.

Lexie didn’t have my cell number. I told her, via Aunt Diane, that I’d given up my cell phone, that the bills were too high, and I was going to be one of those old-school landline people who used an answering machine.

“Jax?” Lexie said into the machine. “I know you’re there. I can feel you listening.”

I turned the volume all the way down. There was no way to mute it, but I could lower it to a dull murmur. Guilt gnawed away at my stomach as I walked away from my sister’s disembodied voice, poured myself the hottest bath I could coax from the old water heater in the basement, complete with a handful of calming salts. I shut the door, tuned the radio to jazz, and did my best to forget all about my sister. I watched the faucet drip into the tub, saw the rust stains years of leaks had left in the old porcelain. I leaned back, closed my eyes, and went under, trying to still my mind, the water filling my ears and nose, muffling the world around me.

* * *

Hours later, the bottle of wine was long gone; I’d had a dinner of cheese, crackers, and olives and passed out on the couch watching The Body Snatcher. My sister had stopped calling around eleven.

The dull ring of the phone woke me a little before one. I was still stretched out on the couch, but Boris Karloff was gone and there was an exercise infomercial on. My mouth tasted like wine, and my stomach churned unpleasantly. My head still ached.

“Jax?” Lexie cooed into the machine. Even though I’d turned it down as low as it would go, I still heard her. “This is important. The biggest thing that has ever happened to me. Or to anyone. This changes everything.”

I stumbled off the couch, reached for the phone. By the time I picked it up, my sister was gone.

* * *

The next morning, after half a pot of coffee and three Advil, I sucked it up and called my sister. She didn’t answer. I left a message, apologizing for not getting back to her sooner. I lied and said I’d been away overnight and had just gotten home. I had a cover story figured out—a conference in Seattle on mood disorders. I probably wouldn’t need it—Lexie didn’t ask questions about my life, especially not when she was manic; she was too caught up in her own drama.

“Call me back when you get this,” I said. “I’d love to catch up.”

I let myself imagine it: How easy it would be to fall into the familiar patter of conversation with her; how comforting to slip back in like there had never been a rift.

But it wouldn’t be like that, not really. Lexie was off her meds, and I’d be thrust into the role of coaxing her to get back on them, to go see her doctor, to seek help. I could already hear Barbara’s advice: “Boundaries, Jackie. Remember your boundaries.”

I went through my usual Saturday routine: the gym, grocery shopping, a trip to the dry cleaners. I called her again before lunch. Then in the afternoon. I imagined her at Sparrow Crest, looking at the ringing phone, too wrapped up in her own mania to answer. Or, maybe she was being petty. You don’t pick up for me, I don’t pick up for you.

Touché.

“It’s me again,” I said to voice mail. “If you’re mad at me, I get it, but do me a favor and call me back anyway, okay?” My words were clipped, annoyance coming through loud and clear. Around three, I was actually worried enough, or maybe I was just pissed off enough, to call Aunt Diane.

“Lexie is off her meds again,” I said instead of hello.

“Is she? I haven’t heard a peep from her. Not a single message.”

Odd. When my sister had a manic episode, she called everyone, starting with my father and Diane. “I guess that makes me the lucky one,” I said. “She’s left me over a dozen, none making sense. And now she’s not answering her phone.”

“Do you want me to go check on her? I’m heading out that way this evening. There’s a poetry reading in Hanover.”

“Poetry reading?”

“I’m not getting all hoity-toity intellectual. Are you imagining me all beatnik with a black turtleneck and beret? I’m actually in hot pursuit of a woman—a poetry lover.”

“Really?” I snorted into the phone. Our fifty-six-year-old aunt had divorced our uncle Ralph ten years ago, come out of the closet, and now seemed to be with a new woman each week, “making up for lost time.” Diane usually called me at least once a week to check in, but it had been over two weeks since I’d heard from her. I figured either she was super busy at work or caught up in one of her brief, feverish flings.

“Nothing like wine, a bookstore, and a little poetry to open one up to the powers of love.”

“I’m not sure how much love has to do with it,” I said.

“ ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ ” she sang, doing her best Tina Turner. Then she stopped, chuckled. “Are you calling it a secondhand emotion? Speaking of which—” She paused, seemed to hesitate, then plunged ahead. “Have you heard anything from Phil?”

I blew out an exasperated breath. “Phil and I have been officially over for nearly a year now.”

I closed my eyes, saw his face when I’d told him it was finally over. His normally ruddy cheeks went pale, his lips turned blue like he’d forgotten to breathe. We were in the grocery store, of all places, and he had been pointing out for the millionth time how much easier it would be if we moved in together, so we wouldn’t need to buy things like separate toothpaste and bags of coffee and toilet bowl cleaner. We were in the toothpaste aisle when I told him that I couldn’t ever be the person he was asking me to be, the person who would share everything with him.

“I know,” Diane said. “But you said he was still calling. I thought maybe…”