The clouds finally decided to open to rain. It was a relief more than anything. It came down hard and heavy.

Quinn watched the rain beat sideways into the pond, into the swimming pool. The steam rose from the ground and the sky came down to meet it.

The rain washed the fallen food on the patio into a single creeping muck. Rain and tears united and returned to puddle, pool, and pond.

Her bare feet sank into velvet wet ground. Her head went hollow when the fat drops splattered down on it. She turned her face up to the sky and let the rainwater bless her eyelids.

Let the pain in. Give it a voice if it needs one.

Now it had one. It was ugly but it spoke. Maybe none of them could feel the change in the air, but she could. Maybe now they could all get on with it.

Mostly everyone had gone now. None of the words or images lingered on the warm stones. She let them all wash away except one: the picture of mint silk Sasha and sport coat Ray standing together in the center of the mess. Small and big, dark and light, left and right. Behind them, she saw that they held hands. All the opposites, everything at once came together. The despair washed away, and that was the thing that stayed. There was the past and there was the future. It felt whole.

How hopeful we were and are. How can we be any other way?

She sat in the wet grass and watched the rain tap the surface of the pond thousands of times. In her mind she saw their two clasped hands.

She could stay like this until the sun dipped down and probably until it came up again. She could repair herself here for a while. But there was still something she needed to do. What must she do? It seemed faint to her now.

—

And then she remembered she owed Myrna a piece of cake.

Sasha’s father was already in the car, her mother told her. Please come now, she mouthed dramatically, twice.

Sasha had tried to keep some order among her impressions, fears, feelings, until they were simply too much. With the press of Ray’s hand against her hand all systems sizzled, shorted, and went blank.

By now her mind was a canvas over which fleeting sensations scratched like rodents: The sting of a blister chewed into her heel by the strap of her new silver shoe. The clutch of Susan Hurn’s white fingers on the table. The flower cake rising gently into a dark gray sky.

Before she could get into the car, Sasha needed to find Quinn. She needed to see her face to know it would be okay. Mattie said she’d seen her. She said Quinn was lying in the grass by the pond.

Rain splashed down as Sasha tripped barefoot across the grass. Soft mud burped under her toes, her heavy sodden dress sticking to her legs, tangling her stride. Dusk had begun to fall. Her perfect green dress took light from light. Now it just looked black.

Quinn wasn’t there. Sasha stumbled back up to the house. She could sense her father in the car, windows closed against the rain, steam clotting the outside world, the air inside so pressurized by indignation the whole thing could blow like a special effect in a Vin Diesel movie. She imagined bits of her father’s Mercedes spread from Manorville to Montauk.

Emma had left in her own car minutes earlier. That was what Mattie had said. And yes, she seemed calm enough to drive. Mattie was going with Lila and Adam. And Ray had been designated driver of Mattie’s car to return Grandma Hardy to her old person home in Oyster Bay.

Briefly Sasha saw Lila in the passenger seat of a car through a window streaming with rain. You are not what I thought. I imagined you better.

She could already feel the urge to reconstruct her father and Lila and all the mythology that depended on them. And yet she knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. They didn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s for us that we hold them up, not for them.

We’re a bunch of fantasists, she thought. Reality horned in once in a while and they all tripped over each other trying to get away from it.

Except maybe Quinn. She wasn’t afraid.

Sasha stepped out the front door. Her mother buzzed the window down impatiently. “Get what you need and come on! We’ll meet you at the end of the driveway.”

Who would want to remain at the site of this disaster? Nobody. Run for the exits, put it farther away, let it be somebody else’s problem a little more than yours.

Except Quinn. Where was she?

Sasha found her injuring silver shoes she’d kicked off by the patio. She found her phone and her bag in the kitchen.

On the way across the gravel out front, she finally found Quinn. Quinn sat astride her bike, still in her long tunic, soaked with rain and muddy at the hem. Her hair dripped; the dot in her nose sparkled. A cherry-red canvas bag hung over her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m coming back. I just need to take care of one thing,” Quinn called, starting off pedaling into the darkening air.

There was something else Sasha needed to ask, but she couldn’t think what. Heavy leaves weighted branches on either side of the driveway to form a gothic arch over Quinn’s head.

Even now her sister did stand-up pedaling like she was in fourth grade, and it was just another thing that made Sasha feel teary.

Whatever they had all wanted, it was too late. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

—

Sitting in traffic in Queens, a mile back from the Midtown Tunnel, Sasha’s father’s phone rang. He was driving. He was still too angry to talk to his wife or daughter, much less his phone. It stayed in his pocket.

It rang again. He got madder at it. Cursed and ignored it.

And then it rang again.

Sasha sat up straight, her heart accelerating heavily.

“Darling, you should pick it up,” Evie said. “What if there’s an emergency?”

“My God, Evie. What more could go wrong today?” Robert growled.

His words coincided with the onset of the fourth ring, and stabbed fear into Sasha’s heart. In her private religion that was the kind of thing you were never allowed to say.

He lifted out of his seat to fish the phone from the bottom of his pocket.

“Dammit,” he muttered. “I missed it.” He tossed the phone at Evie like he was beyond disappointment or fear.

“It’s a six-three-one number. I don’t recognize it,” she said.

“All of them?”

“Four calls.” Evie waited until he came to a stop to show him the phone. “Do you recognize it?”

Robert squinted at the screen, shook his head. “Play the voice mail.”

Instinctively Sasha put both feet on the floor of the car, put her hands flat on the seat on either side of her. She realized the vibration in her stomach was not just agitation, but her own phone buzzing. She let it go, intent on hearing the voice mail.

Evie pressed Robert’s phone to her head so only faint sounds leaked out. “Robert, pull over,” she said.

Never had Evie given an order to Robert. Never would Robert have complied with one had her voice not sounded like that. Robert spun the wheel roughly to the right through two lanes of traffic and pulled to a stop on the shoulder. Two lanes worth of cars honked at him.

His hands still clutched the wheel even though he’d stopped driving. “Who?”

“It’s a woman from the trauma center at Brookhaven.”

Her father’s jaw was set; his eyes were closed. She was scared for him. Why for him? Why did she imagine it would be his news and not hers?

Evie loosed a strange animal noise followed by five words, quickly: “Quinn was in an accident.”

Real tragedies didn’t happen gradually. They didn’t build you up with foreshadowing like in books and movies. They didn’t culminate with lessons learned or rebalance the moral ledger.

Real tragedies happened in five seconds, in five words. They waited until you were getting herded into the stupid Midtown Tunnel and smashed you in the head. They took what you loved away and left you with nothing.

Sasha heard an unrecognizable voice come out of her own mouth. “Is she okay?”

From Evie’s face, Sasha was both frantic to know and did not want Evie to answer. Sasha put both hands to her head, like a punch-drunk boxer awaiting the haymaker, protecting her ears from taking in more words.

Her father was a black hole of fear, gravitationally collapsed, too terrible to look at.

“They say we should go to the hospital.”

No, no. We are too far down. We aren’t ready, Sasha thought.