“No,” I said as she yanked the wheel and we sputtered to a stop behind Dave's truck. “No,” she repeated. “Exactly. I don't.” She got out of the car, grabbed her one bag of groceries, and slammed the door. I followed her up the steps into the house, where Dave was sitting on the couch in jeans and a Spam T-​shirt, an open bag of Fritos on his lap. “Hey there,” he said cheerfully as she brushed past him into the kitchen, the door swinging shut behind her. I could hear her bracelets clanking as she moved around, putting things away, cabinet doors banging shut, one by one. Dave, with one Frito halfway to his mouth, raised his eyebrows. “We saw her mom at the store,” I explained.

“Oh,” he said, popping it into his mouth. “How'd that go?”

“Shit!” Corinna said loudly, as something crashed and broke in the kitchen. “Goddammit.”

“Not so good,” I told him. He sighed, standing up. “Here,” he said, handing off the Fritos to me. “I'm going in.” I watched as he pushed the kitchen door open. It started to swing shut behind him before catching on the stubborn piece of kitchen tile that poked up at the edge of the threshold. He walked over to where Corinna was standing, crying, holding a piece of broken plate in her hand. “This fell,” she said, holding it up as proof. “I didn't drop it.”

“I know,” he said, taking it out of her hand and putting it on the counter. “It's okay.” She wiped at her eyes, impatiently. Then she said, “I hate that I let her do this to me. It's so dysfunctional.”

“It's not your fault,” Dave said as Corinna closed her eyes, leaning her face against his chest, and I felt bad for watching, turning my attention to the Brady Bunch rerun on the TV. I wondered again if this was what Cass's life was like with Adam in New York. I hoped so. Even if she was struggling and living off Ramen-​noodle soup, it seemed perfect to be in this kind of love. Corinna was still crying, even as Dave kissed her forehead and smiled, taking one of her hands and twirling her around the small, paint-​peeling kitchen. “Stop,” she said, half-​laughing as he dipped her over the garbage can. “David, honestly.” He was humming something, a song I didn't know, as he twirled her out, then pulled her back, scooping an arm around her waist, and led her into an exaggerated tango, both of them stepping expertly over the dog bowl. “You're crazy,” she said, but now she was smiling. Outside the window over my shoulder it was winter, flat and gray. But in the kitchen, under the warm bulb light, they were still dancing, laughing, twirling across the tiny floor while those silver bracelets jingled, making music all their own.

My mother was still buying dolls and glued to the Lamont Whipper Show daily, where she caught glimpses of Cass every once in a while. Adam, however, she saw every day, since at least one fistfight or hair pulling incident occurred on each show. He was always bounding onstage, grabbing wives off their cheating husbands or separating angry drag queens while the crowd roared in the background. She was also writing Cass each week, and although she hadn't heard back yet, there'd been four hang-​ups so far on our phone, all coming during the official O'Koren dinnertime: six to six-​thirty. My mother would throw down her napkin and run to grab the phone, then stand there saying hello again and again, her fingers gripping white around the receiver, before finally replacing it and walking slowly back to the table. She'd sit down, not saying anything, while my father and I watched her, the only sound the scraping of forks against plates. “Margaret,” my father would say, finally. “It's probably just some long-​distance company”

“She almost said something that time,” my mother would blurt out. “I could hear her breathing. She wants to talk to me. I can feel it.” This was probably true. Cass had always been easily homesick. Even when we went to camp as teenagers she'd bawled at the bus station. I knew the only reason she hadn't gotten in touch so far was just because she was afraid my parents would somehow force her to come home. Even as I imagined her making Hamburger Helper without the hamburger with Adam in New York, being madly in love, I knew my sister, and I was sure she missed us. On Saturday afternoons, I went to the Arts Center with my mother and Boo for photography class. I'd regretted agreeing to it almost instantly mostly because between cheering and school I didn't see Rogerson as much as I wanted, to begin withbut in time I found that I actually liked the class. The instructor was a young, energetic photographer named Matthew, who sported a scraggly goatee, as well as a seemingly endless number of tattered wool sweaters. He gestured excitedly, eyes sparkling, as he guided us through the first few discussions on light, focus, perspective, and setting. Then he just set us loose in different placesTopper Lake, the old graveyard, the supermarket encouraging us to “create our own personal vision” of each. At the supermarket, for instance, my mother spent the full hour in the floral section, trying to get the perfect shot of the rows of cut flower bins, while Boo went for the abstract, selecting a round, bright, yellow squash and arranging it on the meat counter, right next to a freshly cut set of bloody steaks. “Contrast,” Matthew proclaimed excitedly, as she circled the meat with her camera, getting it from every angle. “Make us think about your meaning!” I myself was sorely lacking for inspiration. I contemplated the rows of milk bottles white, smooth, coldbut moved on when I saw two people from our class already there, taking identical pictures from the same angle. Should I do the bored lobsters in their tank? Seek deep introspection in the cheese aisle? I was beginning to lose hope. “Five minutes, people!” Matthew called out as he passed me. “We'll regroup by customer service, okay?” Five minutes. I was getting desperate and had decided to go back to the milk when I walked past the frozen foods. It was empty except for an elderly woman with her cart, who was pulling a door open to get out a frozen dinner. She was small and frail, with skin almost translucent and made whiter by the bright fluorescent lights overhead. I started up the aisle toward her, popping the lens cap off my camera, already lifting it to my eye and adjusting the zoom so that her profile took up the entire frame. Then she leaned in, reaching forward, and as her breath came out in a sudden, small white puff, she closed her eyes, reacting to the cold. I snapped the picture, catching her in that one instant with a simple click. The next week, when we did our developing, I stood and watched as her image emerged in front of me: