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there?”
    â€œI’m here.” All at once I felt drained. I leaned back against the counter and let it support my weight.
    Years earlier, when I’d heard the news about my parents’ deaths, how their car had run off a lonely stretch of road and plunged over an embankment, I’d wanted to scream out loud as if noise alone could negate the awful truth. But this time grief had a different effect on me. I could barely summon the energy to make a sound.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked.
    â€œI’m not sure. Rick was hardly coherent. He said Jenny collapsed last night right after dinner. He and Angie thought she’d fainted. They lifted her up on the couch, then Rick realized she wasn’t breathing. They called for an ambulance but by the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late.”
    I exhaled slowly, feeling pain as the air left my body. There was a constriction in my chest I couldn’t seem to breathe around. “She told me last week that she hadn’t been feeling well. I thought maybe she had Lyme Disease.”
    Aunt Peg snorted softly. “People sometimes die from Lyme Disease, but not suddenly like that. It had to have been something else. What did she say was the matter with her?”
    I thought back, trying to remember. “Something like the flu, except it wouldn’t go away. She wasn’t eating much, that’s how it came up, and she said she’d been having cramps.”
    â€œThey’ll do an autopsy. They’ll have to. People can’t just up and die for no reason. That girl was a child.”
    Not quite, but I knew what she meant. “Rick must be devastated. The two of them seemed so close.”
    â€œThey were always together,” said Aunt Peg. “Even at the shows where things get hectic and the handlers with big strings have to be everywhere at once, you almost never saw one of them without the other.”
    â€œI wonder what he’ll do now.”
    â€œCarry on, I’d imagine. What choice does he have?”
    Davey called from the bathtub, and I went to dry him off and bundle him into his pajamas. He was warm and clean and filled with excitement about the field trip his class was taking the next day to the fire station. I hugged him close and let him chatter on.
    He didn’t notice how quiet I was, so I didn’t have to explain. And that was good. I couldn’t break the news to Davey just then. I couldn’t even understand it myself.
    The next morning when I had a break, I stopped by the office and called Rick and Jenny’s kennel. A kennel girl picked up, and I was able to find out that a wake would be held on Friday evening in Ridgefield. I called Aunt Peg and gave her the news and we made arrangements to go together.
    That’s when it began to sink in that Jenny was really gone. I wished I’d had the chance to get to know her better. Even so, her death left me feeling all hollow inside. She’d been so young. She should have had so many things still ahead of her. How could she have already run out of time?
    On my way to my next class, I stopped by Davey’s kindergarten classroom. There was a glass panel in the door and I was able to look in without disturbing anyone. Davey was at the block station, constructing a skyscraper and laughing with two of his friends.
    I went back to work feeling a little better.
    Â 
    My only sibling is a brother named Frank, who lives in Cos Cob. He’s four years younger than me and there are times when the age difference seems enormous. Most little girls grow out of the idea that their brother is one of the most annoying people they’ve ever met, but I never have. Frank can be irresponsible, opportunistic, and thoroughly charming; often all at the same time.
    One thing I will say for Frank though, is that he loves his nephew dearly. Over the years, he has stepped in to provide Davey with a stable male influence in his life, and for that I will