1.

Everything that loomed so large close up-school, their parents, their lives-all you had to do was step away, and they shrank to nothing.

You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they'd never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life.

Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family. Soon enough Lydia, too, would head off to school.

Soon enough she, too, would cut herself free. He gulped down the rest of his beer and went to get another.

At home, alone on the landing, Lydia cradled the handset in her hands for a long time after the click. The tears that had choked off her voice dried away.

2.

A slow, burning anger at Nath began to smolder inside her, his parting words ringing in her ears. I don't have time for this.

He had turned into a different person, a person who didn't care that she needed him. A person who said things to hurt her.

She felt herself becoming a different person, too: a person who would slap her sister.

Who would hurt Nath as much as he had hurt her. Go take your problems to Jack.

Monday morning she put on her prettiest dress, the halter-neck with the tiny red flowers, which her father had bought her in the fall. Something new for the new school year, he had said.

3.

They had been shopping for school supplies and he had spotted it on a mannequin in the store's window display.

James liked to buy Lydia dresses off the mannequin; he was sure it meant everyone was wearing them. The latest thing, right? Every girl needs a dress for a special occasion.

Lydia, who aimed for unobtrusive-a hooded sweater and corduroys; a plain blouse and bell-bottoms-knew it was a date dress, and she did not date.

She had kept it in the back of her closet for months, but today she pulled it from the hanger.

She parted her hair carefully, right down the center, and clipped one side back with a red barrette. With the tip of her lipstick she traced the curves of her mouth.

4.

"Don't you look nice," James said at breakfast. "Just as pretty as Susan Dey."

Lydia smiled and said nothing, not when Marilyn said, "Lydia, don't be too late after school, Nath will be home for dinner," not when James touched one finger to her dimple-that old joke again-and said, "All the boys will be after you now."

Across the table, Hannah studied her sister's dress and lipsticked smile, rubbing one finger against the rusty scab, fine as a spiderweb, that ringed her neck.

Don't,?she wanted to say, though she didn't know: don't?what? She knew only that something was about to happen, and that nothing she could say or do would prevent it.

When Lydia had gone, she seized her spoon and mashed the soggy cereal in her bowl to a pulp.

5.

Hannah was right. That afternoon, at Lydia's suggestion, Jack drove up to the Point, overlooking the town, and they parked in the shade.

On a Friday night, half a dozen cars would cluster there, windows slowly fogging, until a police car scattered them away.

Now-in the bright light of a Monday afternoon-there was no one else around. "So when's Nath getting back?" "Tonight, I think."

In fact, Lydia knew, Nath would land at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland at five nineteen. He and their father would be home at six thirty.

She peeked through the window to where First Federal's clock rose, just visible in the center of town. Five minutes past four.

6.

When she passed the lake and reached her own street, slowing to catch her breath at last, everything looked unfamiliar: strangely sharp, all the colors too bright, like an overtuned TV set.

Green lawns were a little too blue, Mrs. Allen's white gables a little too dazzling, the skin of her own arms a little too yellow.

Everything felt just a bit distorted, and Lydia squinted, trying to squash it back into familiar shape.

When she reached her own house, it took her a moment to realize that the woman sweeping the porch was her mother. Marilyn, spotting her daughter, held out her arms for a kiss.

7.

Only then did Lydia discover the box of condoms still clutched in her hand, and she shoved it into her bookbag, inside the lining.

"You feel warm," Marilyn said. She picked up the broom again. "I'm almost finished. Then we can start reviewing for your exams."

Tiny green buds, fallen from the trees, crushed themselves beneath the bristles.

For a moment Lydia's voice froze, and when it finally emerged, it was so jagged neither she nor her mother recognized it. "I told you," she snapped. "I don't need your help."

By tomorrow, Marilyn would forget this moment: Lydia's shout, the shattered edges in her tone.

8.

It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales.

For now, startled by her daughter's unusual tone, she attributed it to fatigue, to the late afternoon.

"Not much time left," she called as Lydia pulled the front door open. "You know, it's already May."

Later, when they look back on this last evening, the family will remember almost nothing. So many things will be pared away by the sadness to come.

Nath, flushed with excitement, chattered through dinner, but none of them-including him-will remember this unusual volubility, or a single word he said.

9.

They will not remember the early-evening sunlight splashing across the tablecloth like melted butter, or Marilyn saying, The lilacs are starting to bloom.

They will not remember James smiling at the mention of Charlie's Kitchen, thinking of long-ago lunches with Marilyn, or Hannah asking, Do they have the same stars in Boston? and Nath answering, Yes, of course they do. All of that will be gone by morning.

Instead, they will dissect this last evening for years to come. What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything?

They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure. As for Lydia: all evening, she asked herself the same question.

10.

She did not notice her father's nostalgia, or her brother's illuminated face. All through dinner, and after dinner, after she had said goodnight, that one question churned through her mind. How had this all gone so wrong?

Alone, record player humming in the lamplight, she dug back through her memory: Before Jack's face that afternoon, defiant and tender and hunted all at once.

Before Jack. Before the failed physics test, before biology, before the ribbons and books and the real stethoscope. Where had things gone askew?

As her clock flipped from 1:59 to 2:00 with a gentle click, it came to her, falling into place with the same tiny sound.

The record had long since spun to a halt, and the darkness outside made the silence deeper, like the muffled hush of a library.

11.

She knew at last where everything had gone wrong. And she knew where she had to go. The wood of the dock was just as smooth as she remembered it.

Lydia sat down at the end, as she had so long ago, feet dangling over the edge, where the rowboat knocked softly against the pier.

All this time, she had never dared come so close again. Tonight, in the dark, she felt no fear, and she noted this with a calm sense of wonder.

Jack was right: she had been afraid so long, she had forgotten what it was like not to be-afraid that, one day, her mother would disappear again, that her father would crumble, that their whole family would collapse once more.

12.

Ever since that summer without her mother, their family had felt precarious, as if they were teetering on a cliff.

Before that she hadn't realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.

Anything her mother wanted, she had promised. As long as she would stay. She had been so afraid. So every time her mother said Do you want-she had said yes.

She knew what her parents had longed for, without them saying a word, and she had wanted them happy. She had kept her promise. And her mother had stayed. Read this book.

Yes. Want this. Love this. Yes. Once, at the college museum, while Nath had pouted about missing the star show, she had spotted a nugget of amber with a fly trapped inside.

13.

"That's four million years old," Marilyn whispered, wrapping her arms around her daughter from behind. Lydia had stared until Nath, at last, had dragged them both away.

Now she thought of the fly landing daintily in the pool of resin. Perhaps it had mistaken it for honey. Perhaps it hadn't seen the puddle at all.

By the time it had realized its mistake, it was too late. It had flailed, and then it had sunk, and then it had drowned.

Ever since that summer, she had been so afraid-of losing her mother, of losing her father.

And, after a while, the biggest fear of all: of losing Nath, the only one who understood the strange and brittle balance in their family.