VOICES ECHO DOWN THE HALL as soon as I step through the door. I wander into the kitchen and find Peach placing something in the oven while my dad chops vegetables beside her. He must have said something funny because she’s laughing, and then he’s laughing. Their heads lean close. It’s all so natural, like they’ve known each other for years.

I wonder just how close they became at the ranch.

It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for my dad to date sporadically when I was younger, but he never committed to anyone. I was always his first priority, he said. No one was around long enough for me to wonder what it’d be like if our family expanded, and that’s not what I want now. Peach seems nice, but shouldn’t he be focused on fixing our relationship?

Another burst of laughter erupts from the kitchen. I can’t remember the last time I heard my dad laugh like that. It might have been when Grams would use words wrong and call e-mails “computer letters” or maybe when he’d pranked me into drinking pickle juice on April Fools’—which I spit out everywhere. Watching their moment, I feel strangely left out.

My dad spots me standing there. “Hey, Goose!”

Peach smiles at me. “You’re right on time. We’re making homemade pizza for dinner.”

I stare at them. Surely they can’t expect me to play along while they slowly take over my normal life.

My dad sets down his knife and looks up at me. “How was Earth Club?”

“Good.” I’m surprised at how easily the lie comes out. I’d texted Lin earlier to apologize for ghosting on the meeting, and she said it was fine as long as I showed for the cleanup on Friday.

Peach sets the timer. “Everything will be ready in about ten minutes.”

She looks so comfortable in our kitchen. It makes my stomach churn. I mumble a quick, “I’m not hungry,” and race upstairs, almost bumping into Nonnie as I round the corner in the hallway.

She’s wearing a blouse patterned with bright green giraffes and her signature turquoise glasses. Her hands adjust the frame of one of our family pictures. Wallis sits next to her, thumping his tail in excitement when he spots me.

“Stay, Wallis,” Nonnie says. Miraculously, he does. “Ha! Wish I’d realized he knew that command this morning.”

I stare at the pictures. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, Wallis knocked into the wall as he was running toward the guest room.” Nonnie waves her hand over the collection of pictures. “I noticed a few were crooked, so I’m realigning them.”

I look at the dozens of frames hung along the wall. It’s funny. They’ve been there for so long that I sometimes forget they exist. Most are of me growing up—toothless kindergarten pictures followed by awkward elementary school photos and overly enthusiastic middle school snapshots.

There are a ton of us as a family. One is from our camping trip in Blanco State Park. Another is from a ski trip my dad and I took a few years back. But so many of Grams. She poses with me after my first ballet recital, where she’d learned how to work a video camera just for that evening. In another, we’re lying side by side in a field of blue bonnets on our road trip to Austin. There’s another of us wearing red, white, and blue at Cedarville’s annual Fourth of July parade.

All my friends had moms who were dependable, but I thought I’d always have Grams. These pictures are another reminder of one more thing I’ve lost.

“Take them down,” I tell Nonnie. Then I say it louder. “The ones of her. Take them down.”

Nonnie follows my stare to the pictures of Grams. Understanding washes over her features. I move past her and Wallis and walk into my room, but she follows me before I have a chance to shut my door.

“Kira?” Her voice is gentle at the edge of my bedroom. “May I?”

I set my book bag down on the ground. I’m too tired to fight her on this, so I shrug and sink down on my bed.

Nonnie walks all the way inside. Wallis takes a tentative step behind her.

“I know it doesn’t help,” she says, “but I’m sorry.”

A tightness squeezes hard in my throat. Slowly, she comes and sits down next to me on the bed. I notice she smells strongly of patchouli and rose petals and hairspray.

“Sometimes life throws us balls and forgets to hand us a bat.” She’s quiet for a moment. “You miss her. That’s completely natural, you know.”

I don’t say anything, afraid of the emotions that might come flooding out. I remember my list and how I’d committed to learn how to be a family with her gone, but it’s difficult to do when the memories of her hang in every corner of the house.

“It’s hard. Experiencing loss in one form or another.” Nonnie runs her hands over her slacks. I stare at her chunky collection of turquoise rings—one on every finger. “But it’s the way you handle it that reveals the type of person you are.”

I shrug, unsure of what type of person that makes me.

After a pause she asks, “Do you know why I left New York?”

I assume she thinks my dad has told me, but he hasn’t. I shake my head.

“My husband left me for another woman. Nearly twenty-five years ago. Rayanne Summers—even her name was prettier than mine.”

I pick at my thumbnail. I thought losing Jay to Whitney was hard, but I can’t imagine how it would feel to have a marriage end because your husband wanted to be with someone else.

“I’m sorry.”

Nonnie’s eyes brighten. “I’m not.”

I’m confused. “You’re not?”

“Having Charles leave me was the best thing that happened to me,” she says. “Oh, it was hard. And it hurt. It hurt because I still loved him, and those feelings were terrible to try and process.”

I nod, picking at my pinky nail.

“But one night, when I was trying to get back to Brooklyn, Freddie Mercury stepped right into my subway car.”

I snort. There’s no way I believe that. I sincerely doubt Freddie Mercury would take New York public transportation.

Nonnie smiles at my disbelief. “Of course, it wasn’t the real Freddie Mercury. Only an impersonator. There are a lot of people who’ll entertain you on your route home for tips.” She waves a hand dismissively in the air. “But he had a speaker, and I listened as he lip-synched ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’ It was silly, but considering what I’d gone through it was also quite empowering. I gave him every cent in my wallet for his Queen CD.”

I feel the question erupt before I can stop it. “Why?”

She pauses for a moment. “I married very young. I’m not sure if I had myself figured out. And although I loved Charlie, he’d held me back in a lot of ways. He was always more conservative in his mannerisms and in the way he dressed. I thought respectable attire and droll conversations were all a part of my journey into adulthood.” Wallis comes and rests his chin on her leg, and she gives his head a few gentle strokes. “It turns out that’s not the way it works. You have to be true to yourself. That’s what the faux Freddie reminded me of that night.”

I glance at Nonnie. I assumed her flamboyancy and ridiculously bright clothing were for attention, but now I’m not so sure.

“And when people stare at me or ask me why I wear the things I wear, do you know what I tell them?”

“To shove off?”

Nonnie cackles with laughter. “No, no. I tell them, ‘dullness is a disease.’ You know who said that?”

I take a wild guess. “Freddie Mercury?”

“Exactly.” She grins. “I lost Charlie, but I spent more time becoming the woman I wanted to become.” She adjusts her turquoise frames. “Now, there were mistakes I made along the way—I never intended on ending up at Sober Living—but that’s all a part of life. You always have to forgive your own mistakes. Otherwise they’ll eat you alive.”

We sit in silence for a moment, but my mind is elsewhere. I’m transported back to Merciful Heart, where I was begging to see Grams, but my dad said no, that I don’t want to remember her in her unconscious state while the doctors did everything they could to help her heart. It would only upset me, he said. And like I did that day when Grams told me I couldn’t have a puppy, I repeated those same words to him.

I hate you.

He said he was sorry. He said it over and over, but it didn’t matter. What mattered is the only mother I’d ever had was gone.

“‘See you later,’” I say aloud. “That was the last thing I said to her. To Grams. I was running late for school. I don’t even remember what she said back.”

Nonnie lets this sink in. “You’ve been through a lot, losing your grandmother, losing trust in your father… but you’re still here.”

I stare down at my yellow throw rug. “It wasn’t my decision.”

“But you’re here, aren’t you? Working hard in school, giving your dad another chance. That makes you the strong one.”

A swollen sadness spreads through my chest, filling the hollowness within me. Tears sting behind my eyes. I never thought of myself as strong. That word was always reserved for other people: Raegan’s go-getter strength, Grams’s unconditional support. Never for me.

I wipe away my tears before they can fall. Nonnie pretends not to notice. I silently thank her for that.

“The pictures,” I say. “You don’t have to take them down.”

Nonnie rests her cool hand over my own. “I wasn’t going to.”

It’s a kind gesture, one that fills me with unexpected comfort. I realize that, at this very moment, I have an opportunity to attempt to convince Nonnie to leave as part of my list. I can easily do it, but I don’t. For the first time since they arrived, I don’t mind her company.

From downstairs, Peach hollers that dinner is ready.

I turn to Nonnie. “I ate earlier.”

“Well, I surely can’t say no to pizza.” Her gaze focuses on Wallis, who is spread out on my area rug. “C’mon, boy. I’m sure there will be leftovers.”

Wallis rolls over onto his back, making himself even more comfortable.

“Wallis,” Nonnie warns.

Wallis’s tongue flops over the side of his mouth.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really. He can stay in here.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re sure?”

My eyes find Wallis’s. It’s not his fault someone left him, too. So I nod and with one last glance at the both of us, Nonnie leaves.

The tension in my chest eases, although I can’t explain why. I feel like I should be angry at Peach and my dad for acting like everything is fine, but I’m not. I just feel sad. And more alone than I did before.

Wallis watches me from the rug as I spend the next few hours reading chapters for history and getting on and off the internet to see what my friends are up to. I google a step-by-step breakdown of my algebra homework before giving up and brushing my teeth.

As I’m walking back to my room, I spot something propped up against my door.

Confused, I bend down to pick it up. It’s a CD case. Queen’s Greatest Hits.

I’ve had to listen to this every morning for the past week. Nonnie is basically giving me the power to trash this, but I know I won’t.

Even though I’ve memorized all the songs, I slide it into my laptop’s CD drive. I play the album softly as I climb into bed. I want to be the strong person Nonnie seems to see in me, but the truth is I’m not sure that’s who I am.