9:52 P.M.

“TOBIAS IS DEAD.” NO SOONER HAS Jessica said it than I feel the crunch of metal through my body, the press of steel, the pounding pounding pounding of the cement chewing up my skin. When Tobias was hit, I felt it all, every last cracked rib and drop of blood. I’ve been trying to forget it happened. But of course it had. He’s gone.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Jessica is looking at me curiously, like she’s not sure what my reaction will be. Like I may overturn the table. I won’t, of course. It’s not like this comes as a surprise. He’s dead, I know. I was there.

Conrad is wearing a look of concern, and Audrey keeps repeating “Oh dear” under her breath. Robert says nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Tobias says. “I’m so sorry. I thought tonight—”

“What?” Jessica interrupts, the fire in her voice back. “That you could turn back time?”

For some reason, at that moment, we all look at Conrad. Maybe it’s that he’s a philosophy professor, maybe it’s that he’s been the authority at this table thus far. But I think it’s something else, too. Why are we here? How did this happen?

He holds up his hands as if to keep us at bay.

Audrey steps in then. “I think maybe we need a moment to digest this news.”

Jessica digs the heels of her palms into her forehead. “With all due respect, we’ve been digesting this news for the last year.”

The reality of his death crashes over me, the way it has so many times before. Those first few weeks, waking up gasping for air. The bolt of ice every morning realizing it wasn’t a dream, this is my reality, he’s gone.

And yet for the first time in a year I feel a seed of something different, something bright, new. Because maybe …

I reach for Tobias’s hand under the table, and this time I don’t let go, I hold it there. I feel his fingers curl through mine, the cool press of his palm. This is what I’ve been missing. This. Him. Flesh.

I know Audrey isn’t coming back, or even my dad, but Tobias can. Tobias is mine. If it weren’t for our mistake, if it weren’t for what went wrong, he’d still be here. It’s my job to fix this.

“What if that’s why we’re here,” I say. My voice is shaky and I see my hesitation reflected on the faces of my dinner mates.

“I don’t know…” Robert begins.

“No,” I say. This is it, it has to be. I feel like I’ve stumbled on the key. I’m not interested in another point of view. I want to take Tobias’s hand and lead him out of here, away from all these nonbelievers. “That’s what we’re doing here tonight. We’re going to be able to change things.”

“Sabrina,” Audrey says, and it’s the first time she’s addressed me by name. “I do not think that is such a wise notion.”

“Why not?” I’m feeling defiant, wild. Because what else matters, really, other than having him back? “You said yourself we’re here to figure out what happened.” I turn to Conrad.

“I did,” he says. “I didn’t say change it.”

“Maybe you can make peace,” Robert says. “I know it sounds—”

“No,” I say. “Stop, please, all of you.” Their voices feel harsh, loud, like the cement drilling outside the apartment on Tenth at seven A.M. on a Saturday. I want it to stop.

I look to Tobias, and his eyes are filled with the kind of hope I feel, and I drop down into that—that shared space between the two of us. The place we resorted to time and time again over the last ten years—where we needed only each other. The one that smoothed over our toughest moments, that drew us back together.

“We can try to change, can’t we?” Tobias says.

“I can’t stay for this,” Jessica says. “I can’t. I can’t see you…” She stands, and then Audrey stands, too.

“Sit down,” Audrey says.

Jessica looks taken aback. She pulls her blazer more tightly around her. “I will not.”

“I said sit down,” she repeats, even more forcefully this time. Conrad puts a hand on Audrey’s arm. “This is Sabrina’s dinner, you remember? Jessica, please.”

Jessica shakes her head. Then she plunks back into the chair. “That’s easy for you all to say. When it doesn’t work, I’m the only one who’s going to have to stick around. You’ll all go back, but I’ll have to hear about how it didn’t work, how it feels like she lost him all over again.…” Jessica’s voice cracks, and she sucks in her bottom lip.

“Jess,” I say. I’m still holding Tobias’s hand. “I’m sorry; I have to.”

“You want me to just sit here?” she says. She wipes the back of her hand against her face.

“No,” I say. “No one here knows me as well as you do.”

“That’s not true,” she says. “He does.”

“No,” I say. “He doesn’t.”

Tobias and I knew each other in big ways, sweeping ways, ways that felt eternal and unchanging. Fate. Destiny. The current of life pulling pulling pulling. But in the minutiae, in the day-to-day, in the coffee and poppy-seed bagel and Friends reruns and ballpoint over felt tip, it’s her. She’s always been my in-case-of-emergency person. I never wrote Tobias’s name down. It was always Jessica.

“Please,” I say. “I need you. And I need you to stay.”

She looks at me. Her eyes tell me that she’s tired, that she doesn’t want to do this, that she knows it’s a mistake, that we’ll never figure our way back out. But she nods. “Fine,” she says. “It’s your dinner.”

I feel Tobias’s hand squeeze mine.

Conrad clears his throat. “You were telling us about how he came back from L.A.,” he says.

“We were happy,” I say. I pause, because for the first time I don’t just want to relive my experience, I want to hear his, too. I want to know what this was like for him, all of it. “Weren’t we?”

Tobias looks at me suddenly, almost violently. “Of course,” he says. “How can you even ask me that?”

“Many things can be true at the same time,” Jessica says.