We were all mad at Mike—me more than the rest of my siblings. Even though we could all understand why he was upset, talking to USA Today about how much you hated your family was too much for all of us.

But I had just assumed that, eventually, it would blow over. Soon we’d all be past it, or pretend to be past it, and then it would be like it never happened. But even though Linnie mediated, my mother refused to apologize and Mike refused to apologize, and so they’d stopped talking. And then Mike stayed on campus for the summer. He claimed he was going to be taking summer courses, had already registered for his dorm, and just wanted to stay. And when the fall rolled around, he told my dad in a terse e-mail that he’d be paying his own way in college from now on, signed up for work study and took out loans. When Danny tried to tell him, over group text, just how punishing student loan debt could be, he replied that he didn’t want anything that had come from Grant Central Station. It was like he was in a cold war with my parents, one that only escalated when he didn’t come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

And the longer he stayed away, the harder it became to see how this would ever resolve. It was like the distance between him and my parents—especially between him and my mother—seemed to get wider and wider, so that it was like a chasm that couldn’t be breached, so far apart that you couldn’t even see the other side any longer, and eventually, you even forgot that it was ever there.

I looked around and saw that Danny had made his way to the end of the exhibit, and I hurried to catch up with him. As I did, I caught a glimpse of the lobby once again and saw Brooke standing on the other side of the ribbon, craning her neck, clearly trying to find out where Danny had gotten to.

And I knew I could have called out to her, or waved her in, or just pointed across the exhibit to where my brother was. But I just turned and walked over to join Danny, not letting myself look back. It wasn’t asking too much to have just a little time with my brother, in an exhibit filled with our mother’s art. Brooke would be fine for another minute or two. Danny gave me an easy, untroubled smile as I came to join him at the end of the exhibit. There was an empty space on the wall, reserved for where the final strip would go—it would be placed there after it ran on Sunday.

He nodded to the wall, where there was an updated portrait of all of us—a reference to the strip’s header, and the portrait that was at the beginning of the exhibit. This one showed us as we were now, but in the same spots as before, and not behaving a whole lot better. Danny slung an arm around my shoulders and gestured around at the exhibit. “Look at it all,” he said softly. He shook his head. “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

I leaned against him, resting my head against his arm as I looked at everything that was there—everything our mother had done, for good and bad, this whole world she’d brought into existence with some paper and ink. “Yeah,” I said. “It really is.”

CHAPTER 13

Or, Plus-One

* * *

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK?” J.J. asked, as he rocked back on his heels. “Do you feel rehearsed?”

“Um.” I glanced around the lobby of the Inn to make sure that Linnie and Rodney weren’t in earshot. “Not really.”

To put it mildly, the rehearsal part of the rehearsal dinner had not gone according to plan. When we’d all returned home from the Pearce, it was to find that the house had gotten a lot more crowded since we’d been gone. All the out-of-town guests, and people who would be at the wedding but weren’t in the wedding party, had begun to gather in our house, taking over the kitchen and the family room, with people spilling out onto the deck. My mother had ordered a huge number of pizzas and stacked them on the counter, telling everyone to help themselves. Waffles had not seemed very happy about all the new people who had arrived and had escaped to the upstairs landing, his ears pressed back. I’d almost tripped over him when heading up the stairs, and he gave me a look that was incredibly put-upon, like he was despairing of his lot in life—which seemed a bit extreme to me, since only a few hours ago, he’d been in a shelter.

Because we didn’t have a tent up yet, Will had tried to take us through the rehearsal in the middle of the backyard, which was empty except for the tent pegs that had already been hammered into the ground and which we were explicitly told to avoid, so we wouldn’t trip over them.

But it became clear after a few minutes that the rehearsal wasn’t going great. Max kept trying to run through the ceremony, but Linnie and Rodney had written their own vows and wanted to say them for the first time on their wedding day. And any rehearsal was going to have to be repeated tomorrow, since we were missing half the wedding party. Three of the bridesmaids were delayed—one on a late plane, one stuck in traffic, and one lost, driving around in circles in the back of the “world’s worst Uber.” Finally, it was just easier to tell them to meet us at the Inn for the rehearsal dinner. But more importantly than the bridesmaids—Mike wasn’t there.

He’d texted me as I was changing into my rehearsal dinner dress—deep midnight blue, with a low neck, and a twirly, swingy skirt.

Mike

Hey can’t make rehearsal see you at the dinner

As I read it, a wave of annoyance crested over me—because not only was Mike bailing, but he was expecting me to be the one to tell everyone about it. I’d sent it to the group text with the rest of my siblings and found that when I came downstairs, Linnie seemed more resigned than angry. “The bridesmaids are MIA,” she said with a shrug. “And Rodney’s cousin Marcus can’t come until later. So it’s not that big a deal.”

But I felt it was, and even though Mike wasn’t the reason the rehearsal wasn’t going well, if he’d been here, there would have at least been one less unknown for tomorrow. After a few attempts, Will gave up on the rehearsal and suggested we just head over for the dinner. My mother had made sure that all the guests remaining behind were fed—Aunt Liz had promised to help keep things humming, and reorder pizza as needed—and we’d all caravanned over to the Inn.

Since we were pretty early, the private room in the restaurant was still being set up for us—but I’d texted with Bill and he’d assured me that everything was on track with the decorations. So while we waited, we were hanging out in the lobby.

I saw Linnie and Rodney standing over by the bar, with both sets of parents and Rodney’s older sister, Elizabeth, and her husband, and once I’d verified they were not in earshot, I turned back to J.J. “I just hope everything goes okay tomorrow,” I said, shaking my head.

“It’s going to go great,” someone said as they bumped me with their hip. I turned around, startled, and the next thing I knew, I was being hugged from both sides, enveloped in a cloud of perfume and spearmint gum by two of the bridesmaids—Jenny K. and Priya. When they stepped back, I saw Jenny W. standing slightly apart, and she gave me a smile.

There were five bridesmaids altogether, including me and Elizabeth, but it had never been a question that the Jennys and Priya would be in Linnie’s wedding party—they’d been best friends since Dartmouth.

“Hey, guys,” I said, but that was all I managed before they started talking over me.

“You look so great!” Priya said, running her hands through my hair, pulling it forward over my shoulders, then pushing it back. “Jen, doesn’t she look so great?”

“She does,” Jenny K. agreed, smiling at me. I’d never understood it, but the three of them always seemed to know who was talking to whom, despite the fact that two of them had the same name. People got the Jennys confused occasionally, which made no sense to me, since Jenny Kang was taller and curvy and Jenny Wellerstein was tiny and whip-thin. Priya Koorse fell somewhere in between the two of them, both in height and in temperament.

I’d gotten to know them all over the last ten years—they’d sometimes join Rodney in coming to our house for holidays, or would just show up with Linnie on a random weekend, the four of them driving down from Hanover, all of them saying they couldn’t stand to be in New Hampshire for a moment longer.

“Did you get a haircut?” Jenny W. asked. “I love it!”