eredith threw back the covers and got out of bed. Reaching for the robe on her bathroom door, she was careful to brush her teeth without looking in the mirror. Reflective surfaces would not be her friend today.

The minute she left her room, she heard noise: the dogs were jumping downstairs, barking, and a television was on somewhere. Meredith smiled. For the first time in months, it felt like home again.

Downstairs, she found Jillian in the kitchen, setting the table. The dogs were positioned beside her, waiting for breakfast scraps.

“Dad told me to let you sleep,” Jillian said.

“Thanks,” Meredith said. “Where’s your sister?”

“Still in bed.”

Jeff handed Meredith a cup of coffee. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Rough night,” she said, looking at him above the rim of her cup. The fairy tale had stirred up a lot of old emotions, and that, combined with her worry about her dad’s weakness, had caused a restless night. “Did I keep you awake?”

“No.”

She remembered how entwined they used to sleep. Lately, they slept far enough apart that one’s restless night didn’t affect the other.

“Mom?” Jillian said, putting down napkins. “Can we go see Grandpa and Baba again this morning?”

Meredith reached past Jeff to the stack of buttered toast on the counter. Tearing off a tiny piece, she said, “I’m going to go now. Why don’t you all come after breakfast?”

Jeff nodded. “We’ll take the dogs for a walk and be right down.”

She nodded and took her coffee upstairs, where she exchanged her robe and pajamas for a pair of comfortable jeans and a cable-knit turtleneck sweater. Saying a last quick good-bye, she hurried out of the house.

It was a surprisingly sunny day. Her breath was visible as she walked the quarter mile downhill to her parents’ house. All night she’d dreamed about her dad. Maybe she’d been awake, really, and it had been memories that spiraled through her mind. Or maybe a combination of the two. All she really knew for sure was that she needed to sit beside him, let him tell her some stories from his life so she could hold that knowledge close and pass it on someday. They’d forgotten to do that—pass along family stories, put photographs in scrapbooks; that kind of thing. They knew a little about Dad’s relatives in Oklahoma and how the Great Depression had ruined them. They knew he’d joined the army and met Mom while on active duty, but that was pretty much it. Most of their family stories dated from the start of Belye Nochi, and Meredith, like many kids, had been more concerned with her own life than his.

Now she needed to rectify that mistake. And she wanted to apologize for running out after the fairy tale. She knew it had hurt his feelings and she hated that. This morning she’d give him a kiss and tell him how much she loved him and how sorry she was. If it mattered to him, she’d listen to every damn stupid story her mother had to tell.

At the front door, she knocked once and went inside.

“Mom?” She called out, closing the door behind her. She could tell immediately that coffee hadn’t been made.

“Nice, Nina,” she muttered.

She put the coffee on and went upstairs. At her parents’ closed bedroom door, she knocked. “Hey, guys. I’m here. Are you in there?” There was no answer, so she opened the door and found her parents cuddled together in bed.

“Morning. I’ve got coffee going downstairs, and I started the samovar.” She went to the windows and threw open the heavy curtains. “The doctor said Dad should try to eat. How do poached eggs and toast sound?”

Sunlight shone through the huge bowed windows, illuminating the honeyed oak floors and landing on the ornate Eastern European bed that dominated the room. As with most of the house, there were few splashes of color in here. Just white bedding and dark wood. Even the chair and ottoman in the corner were upholstered in snowy white damask. Mom had done the decorating, and since she didn’t see color, she tended not to use it. The only art on the walls were Nina’s more famous photographs, all in black and white, framed in black walnut.

Turning, she looked at her parents again. They lay spooned together, with Dad on his left side, facing the dresser, and Mom tucked up against his back with her arms around him. She was whispering to him; it took Meredith a second to realize that Mom was speaking Russian.

“Mom?” Meredith said, frowning. For all of her mother’s Russianness, she never spoke that language in the house.

“I am trying to warm him up. He is so cold.” Mom rubbed her hands vigorously along Dad’s arms, his sides. “So cold.”

Meredith couldn’t make herself move. She thought she’d known pain before, but she hadn’t; not until this moment.

Her father lay too still in bed, his hair a mess, his mouth slack, his eyes closed. He looked peaceful, as if he were simply sleeping late, but a pale blue cast rimmed his lips; it was just barely there, but she, who had looked at this face so often, saw that the man she loved wasn’t there anymore. His skin was a terrible gray color. He’d never reach for her again and pull her into a bear hug and whisper, I love you, Meredoodle. At that, her knees buckled. She remained standing only by force of will.

She went to the bed, touched his pale, pale cheek.

He was cold.

Mom made a sobbing sound and rubbed his shoulder and arms harder. “I have some bread saved for you. Wake up.”

Meredith had never heard her mother sound so desperate. In truth, she’d never heard anyone sound like that, but she understood: it was the sound you made when the floor dropped out from beneath you, and you were falling.

The last thing Meredith wanted to think about was what she should have said to her father, but there it was, a shadowy reminder of last night, standing beside her, whispering poison. Had she told him she loved him?

She felt the sting of tears, but knew she couldn’t give in now. If she did, she’d be lost. She wished sharply, desperately, that it could be different, just this once, that she could be the child, taken into her mother’s arms, but that wasn’t how this would go. She went to the phone and dialed 911.

“My father has died,” she said softly into the receiver. When she’d given out all the information, she returned to the bed and touched her mother’s shoulder. “He’s gone, Mom.”

Her mother looked up at her, wild-eyed.

“He’s so cold,” Mom said, sounding plaintive and afraid, almost childlike. “They always die cold....”

“Mom?”

Her mother drew back, staring uncomprehendingly at her husband. “We’ll need the sled.”

Meredith helped her mother to her feet. “I’ll make you some tea, Mom. We can have it while they... take him.”

“You found someone to take him away? What will it cost us?”

“Don’t worry about that, Mom. Come on. Let’s go downstairs.” She took her mother by the arm, feeling like the stronger of the two for the first time ever.

“He is my home,” her mother said, shaking her head. “How will I live without him?”

“We’ll all still be here, Mom,” Meredith said, wiping away her own tears. It was a hollow reassurance that did nothing to ease this pain in her chest. Her mother was right. He was home, the very heart of them. How would they stand life without him?

Nina had been out in the orchard since before dawn, trying to lose herself in photography. For a short time, it had worked. She’d been mesmerized by the skeletal fruit trees, turned into crystalline works of art by the icicles that hung from the limbs. Against a tangerine and pink dawn sky, they were stunning. Her dad would love these portraits of his beloved trees.

She would do today what she should have done decades ago—she’d enlarge and frame a series of apple tree shots. Each tree was a representative of her father’s life’s work, and he’d love the reminders of how much he’d accomplished. Maybe she could even go through the family photos (not that there were many) and find old pictures of the orchard.

Recapping her lens, she turned slightly, and there was Belye Nochi, its peaked roof on copper fire in the new light. It was too early yet to take her dad some coffee, and God knew her mother wouldn’t want to sit at the kitchen table with her youngest daughter, so Nina packed up her gear and walked the long way up to her sister’s house. She’d started from a spot deep in the back of the orchard; by the time she reached the road, she was actually breathing hard.

Really, she couldn’t believe that her sister did this run every day.

When she reached the old farmhouse, she couldn’t help smiling. Every inch of the place was decorated for Christmas. Poor Jeff must spend months putting up lights.

It wasn’t a surprise. Meredith had always loved the holidays.

Nina knocked on the front door and opened it.

The dogs appeared immediately, greeting her with enthusiasm.

“Aunt Nina!” Maddy ran toward her, throwing her arms around Nina and giving her a big hug. Last night’s meeting had been too reserved for both of them.

“Hey, Mad,” Nina said, smiling. “I hardly recognize you, kiddo. You’re gorgeous.”

“And I was what, a total bow-wow before?” Maddy teased.

“Total.” Nina grinned. Maddy took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen, where Jeff was at the table reading The New York Times and Jillian was making pancakes.

Nina actually paused. Last night had been so artificial—with the dark room and the fairy tale and all that unspoken grief—that Nina hadn’t had time to really see her nieces. Now she did. Maddy looked young, still gangly and coltish, with her long, wild brown hair and thick eyebrows and oversized mouth, but Jillian was a woman, serious and composed. It was already easy to picture Jillian as a doctor. There was an invisible line, straight and true, from the pudgy blond girl who’d caught bugs all summer and studied them in jars, to the tall young lady at the stove. And Maddy was still the spitting image of Meredith at that age, but more buoyant than Meredith had ever allowed herself to be.

Strangely enough, Nina felt the passing of her own years when she looked at her nieces’ adult faces. It occurred to her for the first time that she was edging toward the middle of her life. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Of course, she should have had this thought before, but when you lived alone and did what you wanted, when you wanted, time seemed somehow not to pass.

“Hey, Aunt Neens,” Jillian said, removing the last pancake from the griddle.

Nina hugged Jillian, took a cup of coffee from her, and went to stand by Jeff. “Where’s Meredith?” she asked, squeezing his shoulder lightly.

He put the paper on the table. “She went down to see your dad. Twenty minutes ago, maybe.”

Nina looked at Jeff. “How is she?”

“I’m not the one you should be asking,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Before Jeff could answer, Maddy was beside her. “You want some pancakes, Aunt Nina?”

“No, thanks, hon. I better get down to the folks’ house. Your mom is going to tear me a new one for not making coffee.”

Maddy’s wide mouth stretched into a smile. “She sure will. We’ll be down in thirty.”

Nina kissed both girls, said good-bye to Jeff, and headed down the road.

Back at the house, she hung her borrowed coat on the entryway hook and called out for her sister. The smell of freshly brewed coffee drew her into the kitchen.

Her sister was standing at the sink with her head bowed, watching the water run.

“Aren’t you going to yell at me for not making coffee?”

“No.”

Something about the way her sister said it made Nina stop. She glanced back at the stairs. “Is he awake?”

Meredith turned slowly. The look in her eyes was all Nina needed; the world tilted off its axis.

“He’s gone,” Meredith said.

Nina drew in a sharp breath. Pain that was unlike anything she’d ever known collected in her chest, in her heart maybe. An absurd memory flashed through her mind. She was eight or nine, a black-haired tomboy following her dad through the orchard, wishing she could be anywhere else. Then she’d fallen—caught her toe and gone flying. Nice trip, Neener Beaner, he’d said. See you in the fall. Laughing, he’d scooped her into his arms and positioned her on his big shoulders and carried her away.

She walked forward, her vision blurred by tears, and stepped into her big sister’s arms. When she closed her eyes, he was beside them, in the room with them. Remember when he taught us to fly kites in Ocean Shores? but like the other, it was a silly memory, not the best by far, but it was here now, making her cry. Had she said everything to him last night? Had she told him how deeply she loved him, explained enough why she was gone so much?

“I don’t remember if I told him I loved him,” Meredith said.

Nina drew back, looked into her strong sister’s ruined face and tear-filled eyes. “You told him. I heard you. And he knew it anyway. He knew.”

Meredith nodded, wiped her eyes. “They’ll be... coming for him soon.”

Nina watched her sister regain composure. “And Mom?”

“She’s up with Dad. I couldn’t get her to leave him.”

They exchanged a look that said everything and Nina said, “I’ll go try. And then... what?”

“We start making plans. And phone calls.”

The thought of it, of watching his life turn into the details of death, was almost more than Nina could bear. Not that she had a choice. She told her sister she’d be back and left the kitchen. Every step took effort and by the time she reached the second floor, she was crying again. Softly, quietly, steadily.

She knocked on the door and waited. At the silence, she turned the knob and went inside.

Surprisingly, the room was empty except for her father, lying in the bed, with the covers drawn so tightly to his chin that they looked like a layer of new-fallen snow on his body.

She touched his face, pushed a snow-white strand of hair away from his closed eyes, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead. The cold of his skin shocked her and the thought slipped in: He’ll never smile at me again.

She drew in a deep breath and straightened, staring down at him for a long time, memorizing every detail. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she said softly. There were more words, of course, hundreds of them, and she knew when she’d say them later: at night, when she felt lonely and disconnected and far away from home.

Backing away from the bed (she had to, had to make herself move, leave, now before she completely broke), she picked up the phone to call Danny but hung up before she’d even heard a tone. What would she say to him? How could words ease a pain like this? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blur of movement in the yard; dark blurring across white.

She moved to the window.

Mom was out there, in the snow, trudging toward the greenhouse.

Nina hurried downstairs and slipped back into her borrowed coat and wet boots, then walked across the porch, passing the kitchen window. Inside, she saw Meredith talking on the phone, her face chalky, her lips trembling. Nina didn’t even know if her sister saw her pass by.

She went down the side steps and into the thick snow at the corner of the house. Aftera few feet, she picked up Mom’s trail and stepped in her footsteps.

At the greenhouse, she stopped just long enough to gather courage and then opened the door.

Her mother was in her lawn nightgown and snow boots, kneeling in the dirt, pulling up tiny potatoes and throwing them in a pile.

“Mom?”

Nina said it twice more, and got no answer; finally, sharply, she said, “Anya,” and moved closer.

Mom stopped and looked back. Her long white hair was unbound and fell in tangles around her pale face. “There are potatoes. Food will help him....”

Nina knelt beside her mother in the dirt. It scared her to see her mother this way, but in a strange way, it soothed her, too. For once, they were feeling the same thing. “Hey, Mom,” she said, touching her shoulder.

Mom stared at her, slowly frowning. Confusion clouded those brilliant blue eyes. She shook her head and made a sound, like a hiccup. Fresh tears glazed her eyes and the confusion lifted. “Potatoes won’t help.”

“No,” Nina said quietly.

“He’s gone.Evan is gone.”

“Come on,” Nina said, taking her by the elbow, helping her to her feet. They walked out of the greenhouse and into the snowy yard.

“Let’s go inside,” Nina said.

Mom ignored her and walked into the calf-deep snow, her hair and nightgown billowing out behind her in the slight breeze. At last she sat on the black bench in her garden.

Of course.

Nina followed her mother. Unbuttoning her own coat, she took it off and draped it over Mom’s thin shoulders.

Shivering, Nina drew back and sat down. She thought she knew what her mother loved about this garden: it was contained and orderly. In the sprawling acreage of the orchard, this one square felt safe. The only color in the garden, besides summertime and autumn leaves, belonged to a single copper column, simple in design and accentuated with scripted decorations, that supported a white marble bowl that, come spring, would be filled with white, trailing flowers.

“I do not want him buried,” her mother said. “Not in ground that freezes. We’ll scatter his ashes.”

Nina heard the familiar steel in her mother’s voice again, and she almost missed the craziness of a minute ago. At least the woman in the greenhouse felt things. This woman, her mother, was back in control. Nina longed to lean against her, to whisper, I’m going to miss him, Mommy, as she might have done as a little girl, but some habits were so ingrained by childhood that there was no way to break them, even decades later. “Okay, Mom,” she said finally.

A minute later, she stood up. “I’m going to go in. Meredith will need some help. Don’t stay out here too long.”

“Why not?” her mother said, staring at the copper column.

“You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“You think I could die from the cold? I am not a lucky woman.”

Nina put a hand on her mother’s shoulder, felt her flinch at the contact. As ridiculous as it was, that little flinch hurt Nina’s feelings. Even now, with Dad’s death between them, Mom wanted only to be alone.

Nina went back into the house and found Meredith still in the kitchen making calls. At her entrance, Meredith hung up and turned.

In the look that passed between them was the realization that this was who they were now. The three of them—she and Mom and Meredith. From now on they’d be a triangle, distantly connected, instead of the circle he’d created. The thought of that made her want to run for the airport. “Give me a list of numbers. I’ll help with the calls.”

More than four hundred people filled the small church to say good-bye to Evan Whitson; several dozen of them had come back to Belye Nochi to show their respects and raise a glass. Judging by the dishes Meredith had washed, a lot of glasses had been raised. As expected, Nina had been a marvelous host, drinking easily and letting people talk about Dad; Mom had moved through the crowd with her head held high, rarely stopping for longer than a moment; and Meredith had done all the heavy lifting. She’d organized and set out all of the food people had brought; she’d made sure there were plenty of napkins, plates, utensils, and glasses on hand, as well as ice; and she’d washed dishes almost continuously. There was no doubt that she was doing what she always did when stressed: hiding out behind endless organizing and chores. But honestly, she wasn’t ready to mingle with friends and neighbors yet, to listen to memories about her father. Her grief was too new, too fragile to be handed back and forth in drunken hands.

She was elbow-deep in soapy water when, at about midnight, Jeff came into the kitchen to find her. He took her in his arms and hugged her. It was like coming home after along journey and the tears she’d held back during the last few days, and the wrenching memorial service today, came pouring out. He held her, stroking her hair as if she were a child and saying the great lie, It will be okay, over and over again. When there was nothing left inside, she drew back, feeling shaky, and tried to smile. “I guess I’ve been holding that in.”

“That’s what you do.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Should I fall apart?”

“Maybe.”

Meredith shook her head. It only made her feel more separate when he said things like that. He seemed to think she was a vase that could break and be glued back together, but she knew that if the worst happened—if she shattered like glass—some pieces could be lost forever.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “You helped me through my parents’ deaths. Let me help you.”

“I’m fine. Really. I’ll fall apart later.”

“Meredith—”

“Don’t.” She hadn’t meant to say it so sharply, and she could tell she’d hurt his feelings, but she was barely hanging on here. She had no energy to worry about anyone else. “I mean, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of things here. The girls are tired. Why don’t you take them home?”

“Fine,” he said, but there was a guarded look in his eyes she didn’t recognize.

After everyone had gone, Meredith stood in the clean, orderly kitchen, alone, and wished almost immediately that she’d made a different choice. How hard would it have been to say, Sure, Jeff, take me home and hold me...

She threw the dishrag on the counter and left the hiding place of her mother’s kitchen.

In the living room, she found Nina alone, standing in front of a large easeled picture of Dad. In a pair of crumpled khaki pants and a black sweater, with her short black hair a mess, she looked more like a teenager ready for her first safari than a world-famous photographer.

But Meredith saw the grief in her sister’s bottle-green eyes. It was like too much water in a glass, spilling over, and she knew Nina was like her: neither of them knew how to express it or even really feel it as fully as they should, and she hurt for both of them, and for the woman who lay upstairs in her empty bed, feeling the same loss. She wished that they could come together, dissipate some of this pain by pooling it. But that wasn’t who they were. She put down her wineglass and went to Nina, the little sister who’d once begged her to remember Mom’s fairy tales and tell them in the dark when she couldn’t sleep. “We have each other,” Meredith said.

“Yeah,” Nina agreed, although their eyes betrayed them both. They knew it wasn’t enough.

Later that night, when Meredith was at home, tucked into bed beside her husband, it occurred to her that she’d made a terrible mistake, and regret haunted her, kept her awake. She’d been wrong to attend her father’s wake as a caterer instead of as a daughter. She’d been so afraid of her feelings that she’d boxed them up and shoved them away, but it had made her miss it. Unlike Nina, Meredith hadn’t heard the stories his friends had had to tell.

Sometime around three in the morning, she got out of bed and went to the porch, where she sat wrapped in a blanket, staring at little beyond the vapor of her own breath. But it wasn’t cold enough to numb her grief.

For the next three days, Nina tried to be a real part of this family, but her every attempt was a failure. Without Dad, they were like random pieces of a board game, without a common goal or a rule book. Mom stayed in bed, staring straight ahead, knitting. She refused to come down for meals and only Meredith could coax her into showering

Nina had always felt vaguely useless next to her sister’s über-competence, but it had never been as apparent as it was now. Meredith was like Ms. Pac-Man, moving steadily forward, ticking chores off her list. Somehow, impossibly, she’d gone back to work the very day after the funeral, so she was running the orchard and warehouses, taking care of her family, and still she managed to come to Belye Nochi at least three times a day to micromanage Nina’s chores.

Nothing Nina did was right; Meredith did everything again. Vacuum, dishes, laundry. All of it. Nina would have said something, but honestly, she didn’t give a shit, and Meredith moved like a frightened bird, all wing-flapping and chirping. She looked scared, too, like a woman on a cliff about to jump or fall.

But all of that, Nina could handle.

It was the grief that was killing her.

She thought, He’s gone, at the oddest times, and it hurt so badly she caught her breath or stumbled or dropped a glass. (Meredith had loved that.)

She needed to get the hell out of here. That was all there was to it. She wasn’t doing anyone any good, least of all herself.

Once she’d had that thought, there was no getting rid of it. All day today, she tried to talk herself out of it, told herself she couldn’t run away, certainly not so close to Christmas, but at three o’clock, she went upstairs to her room, closed the door behind her, and called Sylvie in New York.

“Hey, Sylvie,” she said when her editor answered.

“Hi, Nina. I’ve been thinking about you. How’s your dad?”

“Gone.” She tried not to react to that word, but it took effort. She went to the window of her girlhood room and stared out at the falling snow. It was midafternoon, and already it was darkening.

“Oh, Nina. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know.” Everyone was sorry. What else was there to say? “I need to get back to work.”

There was a pause. “So soon?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure? You can never get this time back.”

“Believe me, Sylvie, the last thing I want is this time back.”

“All right. Let me do some checking. I know I need someone in Sierra Leone.”

“A war zone sounds perfect,” Nina said.

“You have serious issues, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

They talked for a few more minutes and Nina hung up. Feeling better—and worse—she went downstairs and found Meredith in the kitchen, doing the dishes. Of course.

Nina reached for a towel. “I was going to do that, you know.”

“These are lunch and dinner dishes from yesterday, Nina. When exactly were you going to wash them?”

“Whoa, slow down. It’s dishes, not—”

“People dying of hunger. I know. I get it. You do things that matter. Me, I just run the family business and take care of our parents and clean up after my important sister.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Meredith turned to her. “Of course not.”

Nina felt impaled by that look, as if all her faults had just been laid bare. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“No. Not really.” Meredith reached for the cleanser and began scrubbing the white porcelain sink.

Nina moved toward her sister. “I’m sorry,” was all she could think to say.

Meredith turned to face her again. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a soapy trail behind. “How long are you staying?”

“Not long. The situation in Sierra Leone—”

“Spare me. You’re running away.” Meredith finally almost smiled. “Hell, I’d do the same thing if I could.”

Nina felt as bad about herself as she ever had. She was running—from her ice-cold mother, from this too-empty house, from her brittle, competent sister, and from the memories that lived here. Perhaps those most of all. She cared about what her selfishness would cost her sister, and about the promise to her father she was ignoring, but God help her, she didn’t care enough to stay. “What about his ashes?”

“She wants to scatter them on his birthday in May. When the ground isn’t frozen.”

“I’ll come back for that.”

“Twice in one year?” Meredith said.

Nina looked at her. “It’s some year.”

For a moment, it looked like Meredith might crumble, just let go and cry, and Nina felt the start of her own tears.

Then Meredith said, “Be sure and say good-bye to the girls. You know how much they idolize you.”

“I will.”

Meredith nodded curtly and wiped her eyes. “I have to be back at work in an hour. I’ll vacuum before I go.”

Nina wanted to say she’d do it—make one last effort—but now that she’d decided to leave, she was like a Thoroughbred at the starting gate. She wanted to run. “I’ll go pack.”

Late that night, when Nina’s few things had been put in her backpack and stowed in the rental car, she finally went in search of her mother.

She found her wrapped in blankets, sitting in front of the fire.

“So you are leaving,” her mother said without looking up.

“My editor called. They need me for a story. It’s terrible, what’s happening in Sierra Leone.” She sat down on the hearth; her body shivered at the sudden heat. “Someone needs to show the world what’s happening there. People are dying. It’s so tragic.”

“You think your photographs can do that?”

Nina felt the sting of that remark and the insult. “War is a terrible thing, Mom. It’s easy to sit here in your nice, safe home and judge my work. But if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d feel differently. What I do can make a difference. You can’t imagine how some people suffer in the world, and if no one sees it—”

“We’ll scatter your father’s ashes on his birthday. With or without you.”

“Okay,” Nina said evenly, thinking, Dad understood, and hurting all over again.

“Good-bye, then. Happy Christmas to you.”

On that note, Nina left Belye Nochi. At the porch she paused, looking up the valley, watching the snow fall. Her practiced eye took it all in, cataloging and remembering every detail. In thirty-nine hours, it would be dust that rained down on her shoulders and swirled around her boots, and the images of this place would bleach out like bones beneath a punishing sun, until, in no time at all, they’d be too pale to see at all. Her family—and especially her mother—would become shadowy memory beings whom Nina could love... from a distance.