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“Well, what do you want me to do with her?” asked Mike, growing exasperated with his friend and housemate.

“Just take her off my hands for the evening,” implored Ed earnestly.

“I don’t know,” replied Mike, staring uncertainly into the living room, where teenage Sadie was lingering near the table containing all the bottles of alcohol for the Christmas party later that night. She was clad in faded jeans and a blood-red sweater.

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“I remember a whisper I heard when I was seven; a uniformed policeman was addressing my aunt, with whom I lived. ‘Your brother, Mrs. Allen,’ he said, ‘lost his life in an automobile accident last night.’

“Aunt Livy’s only brother was my dad, Tom Lewis, Jr. I remember thinking to myself that I was named after him, which made me Tom Lewis, III. I heard a sudden sharp intake of breath and then screaming. I remember worrying about how Aunt Livy was taking the news, but then I realized that the heavy breathing and screaming was coming not from my aunt but from me. But nobody else could hear it. They paid me no mind.

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