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Melissa and I do dishes as Mom and Dad decide what things we can and can’t take with us. Nearly everything will get left behind.

“Easy for me,”

I tell Melissa. “I don’t own anything.”

“The old would’ve brought like ten trunks,”

Melissa says, rinsing off a plate and handing it to me to load in the dishwasher. “You hated to get rid of anything. Remember the time Mom emptied your wastebasket and you flipped out?”

“Because Calvin’s T-shirt was in there.”

“Which you’d thrown out,”

Melissa says.

“Because we were in a fight. It was a dramatic gesture.”

“What were you fighting about?”

“I can’t even remember,”

I say. “But one thing about being dead for seven years is that it really shifts your perspective.”

“Helps get your priorities straight,”

Melissa jokes.

“See the world in a new light.”

“More people should try it.”

“Cheaper than therapy.”

We giggle. Two sisters being goofy. For a moment, everything feels so right.

And then the doorbell rings.

“Who is that?”

Mom calls, her own voice ringing in alarm.

Melissa peers out the kitchen window. “It’s Scott Locke,”

she says in a shout-whisper. “With Casey,” she adds.

“Shit!”

I dive toward Melissa’s old cubby hidey-hole.

“Don’t answer the door!”

Mom hisses.

“He already saw us,”

Dad whispers. “It’ll be more suspicious if we don’t. Just stay calm.”

He walks to the front hall, opens the door. “Scott,”

he says, his voice booming and cheerful. “How nice to see you. And you, Casey. Wow, how long has it been?”

From my hiding spot, I can see Mom. The look of terror is exactly the same expression she wore when she saw me again. Melissa goes to her, puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Hi, Mr. Crane.”

Casey sounds nervous. And she looks it, too. Underneath her pretty blond hair, her suntan, she looks scared. I should hate her. Or be angry. But I can’t be. If I forgive Calvin, I have to forgive her.

“Mind if we come in?”

Mr. Locke asks.

“We’re actually in the middle of something,” Dad says.

“Yes, I can see that. Looks like you’re packing or something.”

I hear the sound of footsteps as Casey’s father enters. Casey shuffles in behind him.

“We are,”

Dad says. “I’m moving back in, you see, and so we’re doing a purge before we consolidate households.”

“Yes, I heard about that. Congratulations on your happy union.”

He puts such an emphasis on congratulations, it sounds sarcastic. “I also heard you’re leaving town for a while.”

“How’d you hear that?”

Mom asks in a tremulous voice.

“You announced it to the whole church. It’s the best way to spread gossip in this town. Tell the faithful.”

“We’re having some family issues,” Dad says.

“Family issues,”

Mr. Locke says. “You’ve had a lot of those, haven’t you?”

Mom gasps. Even from someone like Scott Locke, this is a low blow.

“We’ve had our share,”

Dad says, his voice growing tight.

“Well, what’s that they say? God never gives you more of a load than you can carry?”

And then Scott chuckles. His laughter is like metal against metal. It makes even Melissa flinch.

“What can I do for you, Scott?”

Dad says, his voice growing angry.

“If you remember, my daughter raised those funds for your family.”

“Yes, that was very thoughtful of you, Casey.”

“Thank you,”

Casey says in a quiet voice.

“It was very thoughtful. And very generous. People opened their hearts for you. And their wallets. Raised quite a bit of money, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

“Nearly two hundred thousand dollars. How was that money spent?”

“That’s not really your business, Scott.”

“Well, it kind of is. My daughter raised it.”

“Without telling us,”

Mom calls out. “We never asked for that money. And we didn’t need it. It caused more trouble than it was worth.”

“Gloria,”

Dad says, trying to calm her with a lowering of his hands before turning back to Scott. “We appreciate Casey’s generosity but as the money was not solicited, and as no conditions were put on its use, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

“That’s just the thing,”

Scott drawls in an almost playful tone. He’s enjoying this, the way a cat will play with a captured mouse before killing it. “You haven’t done anything wrong if is actually dead, but is she?”

Mom lets out a cry and puts her hands over her mouth.

“Of course she’s dead,”

Dad says, but he doesn’t sound so convincing.

“Here’s the odd thing. Casey got a call from Calvin Judd, that old boyfriend, and he said that he saw , he spoke to her.”

“That boy is troubled,”

Dad says in a choked voice.

“He’s a druggy loser is what you mean. Such a shame. But not a shocker.”

Scott’s tone is casual and sadistic.

I try to grab a better glimpse of Casey. She had to grow up with this? Why hadn’t she told me? Why hadn’t I noticed?

“Still, he swore he saw her, twice in fact,”

Scott continues, “and then Casey got a note from your daughter here asking to get in touch with Calvin. It all seems a little suspicious.”

“What exactly did Calvin tell you?”

Dad asks Casey.

“Uh—uh,”

Casey stutters. But before she answers, there’s another knock at the door.

The hinge squeaks open and Casey’s father laughs again. “Speak of the devil,” he says.

Casey

Now

As soon as she sees Calvin, Casey regrets coming.

No, that’s not entirely true. There’d been that niggling warning anxiety in her stomach ever since she told her dad about Calvin’s strange call and the message from ’s sister.

“I smell a rat and we’re going to smoke this out together,”

her father had said.

Casey didn’t believe that had come back from the dead, obviously. And she didn’t really think the Cranes had faked her death, either. But her father was so emphatic about her coming, about salvaging the family’s reputation—her reputation. Plus, he’d already bought her a plane ticket, business class. So she ordered a car to the airport and flew home. Her dad was waiting at baggage claim, something he hadn’t done for ages.

“You’ll never believe this,”

he said as they peeled onto the expressway. “But according to your mother’s friend Cathy, the Cranes were in church this morning, even the father, who never goes.”

“I thought they split up,”

Casey said. Her mother had reported this to her years ago, almost gleefully. No one saw that coming, she’d texted, and Casey could hear the words in the same gossipy tone that she felt sure people employed to snipe about the Lockes.

“I thought a lot of things,”

her father replied. “But you haven’t even heard the most damning part of all.” He shook his head and squeezed the steering wheel so tight the padded leather sighed under his grip. “The Cranes are going away for a few months to tend to family matters. Family matters! Can you believe that crock of shit?”

Her father laughed, like attending to family matters was for chumps.

The hard kernel of unease that had sat in Casey’s belly since she’d called her father seemed to grow, a tumor swelling into a boulder. It would flatten her from the inside out.

As they pulled into ’s driveway, Casey’s knees were shaking. What if was there? What if she was alive? What if she knew about what Casey had done to her? She talked such a big game about not caring if found out about her and Calvin, but a weird silver lining of her death was that it had guaranteed she never would find out.

When Mr. Crane opened the door, Casey nearly turned around and ran away. This man had always been kind to her, adding extra chocolate chips to her pancakes on mornings that she slept over because she’d told him that her mother would never allow chocolate with breakfast (too fattening!). And his explanation about all the boxes, that he and Mrs. Crane were getting back together, it sounded legit to her.

But now Calvin shows up. Screaming, “, !”

and waving a piece of paper in his hand, and all that sadness and regret metastasizes into fury.

. It’s always about . It’s always been about . What was so special about her? She was cute enough and smart enough and had a good singing voice but she wasn’t going to Broadway or anything. She was just some average girl in some average town with some average boyfriend. If she hadn’t died young, she would’ve faded into oblivion like the rest of them.

When Calvin sees Casey, he skids to a halt, his mouth ajar. He has the gall to look right at her, to ask: “Have you seen ? Is she here?”

Casey’s father turns to Mr. Crane. “You heard what the boy said. Is she here?”

“Of . . . of course she’s not here,”

Mr. Crane says.

“What you got there?”

her father asks, gesturing to the paper in Calvin’s hand.

“A letter.”

Calvin’s voice is hoarse, his eyes are wild. “She wrote me.” He looks at the paper and reads in a staccato, almost manic, voice:

“Dear Calvin. I don’t know what forever means anymore because I’m not sure time works the way we think it does or even life or death means what we think it does. But I think love does. Because no matter where I have been or where I am going I know that I love you. I feel that with a certainty I can’t explain. And no matter what you have done or what you think you have done, I love you. I feel that with a certainty, too. Loving someone, really loving someone, means wanting them to be whole and happy and free, with you or without you. I don’t think I understood that before but I do now. If you love me, if you ever loved me, please live a whole life, a happy life, and a free life. Yours, forever, .”

Calvin finishes reading and collapses into sobs while Casey’s father laughs. “I’d call that a smoking gun, wouldn’t you?”

And in that moment Casey’s fury shifts and lands right on her father. This man she looked up to, this man she needed. She would hate him, but she’s not sure she loves him enough to hate him.

“No, I’d call that a young man in pain,”

Mr. Crane says, and then he gathers Calvin into his arms. Calvin is so much skinnier than he used to be, but he’s still tall and he flops over Mr. Crane like a tired toddler as silent sobs rack his emaciated body.

“I’ve got you, son,”

Mr. Crane murmurs. “I got you.” And then he, too, starts to cry.

Casey’s father whips out his phone. “I’m calling the police.”

“Dad, leave it,”

Casey says. “Just leave it.”

“I already called Detective Weston,”

Melissa says, wielding her phone in her hand like a weapon. “She’s on her way.”

And then Melissa also embraces Calvin. “I’m sorry,”

she says. “We shouldn’t have left you all alone.”

And then Mrs. Crane is there, too. The three of them stand in the foyer, comforting Calvin.

And Casey, she’s suddenly sick of them all. Sick of being jealous of , sick of Calvin, the Cranes. Wanting what she hasn’t got. Having what she doesn’t need.

“I’m done,”

she says, turning to go. She pushes past Calvin, down the walk, eyes on her phone, already summoning a car to get the hell out of here and never, ever come back. At the edge of the sidewalk, she nearly smacks into a tall, thin Black woman with short-cropped graying hair who she vaguely remembers as the mother of that weird girl used to hang out with. The cop who confirmed Calvin had been with her when died. She probably hated Casey. Everyone in this town did.

But the woman’s voice is kind. “Casey,”

she says. “Are you okay?”

“I gotta get out of here,”

she says. Black spots are dancing before her eyes. She feels drunk. Dizzy.

“Okay. First, I want you to sit down.”

The detective takes Casey gently by the elbow and leads her back up the walk to a wooden bench on ’s porch. “Put your head between your legs and breathe.”

The front door is still open. Casey can still hear her father arguing with Mr. Crane. “What seems to be the issue?”

Detective Weston calls into the house, never removing the hand from Casey’s shoulder.

From the dark space between her legs, Casey listens to her father’s insane rant: The Cranes faked ’s death to steal the money their family raised, only to trash his family’s reputation. He’d been drafted to run for city council but after this whole business, no one wanted him around. They were pariahs. And the Cranes were the real criminals. The detective listens quietly, giving Casey’s shoulder a little squeeze, as if to tell her she knows this isn’t Casey speaking, she absolves Casey, at least from this.

“She’s not even dead! The boy saw her. Just ask,”

her father is yelling.

“Calvin,”

Detective Weston says. “Have you heard from ?”

“Yes,”

he gasps. “She came to see me the other day and she wrote me this letter.” He waves the paper at Detective Weston and all of a sudden he gasps. “She’s here. I see her! She’s in the kitchen.”

Casey forces herself to look up as Calvin moves from the foyer toward the kitchen. She stands up. If is really here, she’ll face it. That’s the least she can do.

“,”

Calvin cries as he runs toward the kitchen. Detective Weston follows, bringing Casey with her.

“Okay, where is she, Calvin?”

Detective Weston asks, gesturing toward the kitchen counter where Calvin is holding his arms tightly around himself.

“,”

Calvin keeps saying.

“I don’t see anyone, Calvin,”

the detective says.

“There was a letter,”

Casey’s father shouts. “He just read it.”

He snatches the piece of paper from Calvin’s grip and without looking at it, hands it to Detective Weston. Casey is right next to her so she can peer over the detective’s shoulder to look at it.

The paper is blank.