The room was silent for a moment, and I looked around at my siblings, wondering how the family room, which had always been one of the best and most peaceful places in the house, had suddenly been turned into a war zone.

“We should go too,” Linnie said, and Rodney nodded and held out a hand to her, helping her to her feet. She was still wearing her white dress and Rodney was in his dad’s suit, and I suddenly felt that much worse about everything. This was supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, and this was how it ended? This was what we were sending them off to the honeymoon suite with?

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Rodney said, his normally cheerful voice not even trying to be upbeat. His arm was still wrapped around my sister’s shoulders, like he was helping to keep her walking upright. “Night.”

We all watched them leave in silence, nobody saying good night back to them—and I wondered if none of my brothers had because they felt, like me, that it would be a complete lie, since this had not been, and would never be, a good night.

“You okay, Chuck?” Danny asked, leaning toward me. I just shook my head. It was like okay was on another planet entirely.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said, only feeling this betrayal hit me now. How could he—how could Danny—have kept this from me?

“They didn’t want me to,” he said, shaking his head. “If it had been up to me, I would have, Chuck. You know that.”

“How could you not have known?” Mike asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Mike,” Danny said, his voice sharper now, a warning.

“I mean, come on.” There was a cruel laugh somewhere in his words. “You live here. You’re the only one who does! And you had no idea?” He shook his head. “You’re so blinded by your Grant worship, always holding this family up like it’s something special—”

“It is!” I yelled, my voice breaking, another tear hitting my cheek.

“Weren’t you listening?” Mike yelled back at me, his own voice cracking now. “There is no more Grant family! It’s over!”

I shook my head, but I couldn’t make myself say anything. I brushed my hand across my face, wiping away the tears that seemed just to be falling of their own accord now.

“Come on,” Danny said, pushing himself up to standing. “I need—I can’t be in this house anymore. Let’s go. Let’s all go.”

“Go where?” J.J. asked even as he stood as well.

Danny just shrugged, with a restlessness I recognized. It was the look he’d had when we’d gone for milkshakes when I was nine and ended up at the Canadian border. We would have made it all the way to Montreal, too, if only we’d had our passports with us. “Out,” he said with a shrug. He started toward the door, then looked back at me. “Chuck?”

I shook my head. It didn’t make sense, but it felt like if I left, if I went outside, this would become real. But if I didn’t move from this spot—the same place I’d been sitting before the world had ended—maybe this would turn out to be just a very realistic dream, one I could still wake up from.

“I’ll come,” Mike said, surprising me, as he joined Danny in the doorway. “I need to get out of here too.”

Danny gave me a look from the doorway, and I knew he was trying to see if I was okay. And normally I would have tried, for his sake, to give him a smile, so that he wouldn’t worry. But I couldn’t seem to manage it right now, and after a moment, Danny turned and left the room, Mike following behind him.

J.J. headed for the door as well, then paused in the doorway and turned back at me. “It’ll be all right,” he finally said, in a voice that had no conviction in it whatsoever.

“Do you really believe that?” I didn’t—but I had no idea what our lives looked like if we weren’t all in this house together, if we weren’t a family, the seven of us. It was like I couldn’t even get myself to imagine it.

“It’s what you’re supposed to say,” J.J. said in a quiet voice after a pause. He stayed there for another moment, then headed out as well. A second later, I heard the kitchen door slam shut, and the sound of a car starting.

I sat alone in the family room, trying not to remember how not that long ago, it had been filled with people eating cake. All this time, I’d been dreaming about everyone coming back—thinking that it meant things were finally going back to how they’d been, not knowing it was the beginning of the end. We’d been on borrowed time, and I hadn’t even realized it. An unseen clock had been ticking down, down, down—counting out the time left when the seven of us would be together in the same family, not broken up into pieces. I’d had no idea that we—the Grant family, one family together—had already ended.

I thought about going upstairs, but then remembered, yet again, that Brooke was in there. But I knew that I couldn’t stay here—in the room where everything had fallen apart.

Now that they had gone, now that it was too late, I suddenly wished I’d left with my brothers. I understood Danny’s impetus to get out, to do something to put all this behind me. I wanted something to go my way tonight, just one thing to work out the way I wanted it to.

Before I even knew I’d made a decision, I was grabbing my bag from where I’d put it beside the couch and pulling up my text chain with Jesse.

Me

Hey—things wrapped up here.

Can I still come over?

CHAPTER 25

Or, Meanwhile, Back in the Basement . . .

* * *

I SAT ON THE ARM of the couch in Jesse’s basement, twisting my hands together and reminding myself to breathe. Jesse had texted me, letting me know the side door was open and that I should let myself in, and to text him when I got there.

I smoothed my hands over the silk of my dress, flexed my feet in my heels, then pushed myself up to standing and paced around the room. I was feeling restless, like the energy coursing through me was making it impossible to sit still. I ran my fingers through my hair, hoping that some of the curls had stayed and hadn’t just turned into frizz. It had been raining steadily, and just getting to my car and then getting to Jesse’s had gotten me fairly soaked—I hadn’t had the presence of mind, when I’d been fleeing the house, to grab an umbrella.

I stopped pacing and made myself sit back down on the couch, pretzeling my legs so I couldn’t go jumping up again. I glanced around the basement—it looked the same as it had over Christmas break. The couch was the same, and the table and chairs in the corner, the dented air-hockey table. The garlands and the Santa hat were gone, of course. But aside from that, nothing had really changed. So I couldn’t figure out why the room felt different now.

Whenever I’d played back the events of that night in my head, Jesse’s basement had taken on a grand stature, every detail cataloged in my mind—the feel of the corduroy couch underneath my bare skin, the way Jesse had been framed by the moonlight coming through the windows. It had all seemed perfect and romantic. But now . . .

The longer I was there, taking it in, I realized it was just a basement. There was a stain on the corner of the rug, and I could see where the fabric on the couch arms was worn. There were chip crumbs on the coffee table and a sweating Dr Pepper can slowly leaving a water ring on the wood.

Which was fine, I told myself firmly, running a hand through my hair. This was the reality of Jesse’s basement, same as it had been in December, and I couldn’t be upset because it wasn’t matching up to what I’d remembered in my head. And I was here now, back in his house, and this was going to happen. That’s what I needed to focus on—not my parents or the fight or how everything with my family was wrecked and in pieces. Just this moment, right now.

I heard steps coming down the stairs and quickly ran a hand through my hair again.

“Hey,” Jesse said, taking the last few steps two at a time. He smiled at me. “You made it.”

“I made it,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and relaxed, like it was just totally normal for me to be back here, like there was nothing unusual about me being alone with Jesse again.