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alcohol.
    “I need you to talk to some people,” he said. “I got it all coordinated. You wouldn’t believe how the stars are aligned.”
    “Please don’t go all stars-aligned on me, Kev. Besides, Dad is dead. What does it matter?”
    The confluence of discussing my dad’s case while staring at the bland piece of art on my wall called Possibilities actually made me tremble. I forced myself to close my eyes and fight the impulse to slam the phone as loudly as I could in my brother’s ear. He was supposed to be the mellow one, the cool, distant guy who didn’t talk about the case, the one who let me know it was okay to gloss over it.
    “I gotta go,” Kevin said. “Favor’s up. Come by tomorrow. It’s your day off anyway.”
    “I’ve played this record too many times,” I said, tugging at a piece of hair with my hand. “Only scratches left. Sorry you wasted your favor.”
    I reached the heavy phone receiver out towards its cradle. Slowly. Part of me didn’t want to disconnect from the bizarre fantasy that I could storm into Lavitte, rip through its healed skin, and reveal the infection still lingering there. But most of me wanted to move forward, away from a past with tentacles so tangled in my soul that to completely disconnect might be to die.
    “Tomorrow at nine!” Kevin shouted just before I let the phone drop into its nest. A brother who knew me too well, as if he sensed the phone was distant from my ear. I hung up. Now I’d never get back to sleep. I lurched from the comfort of my mattress and yanked the blinds up. Dust flew out from between the neglected slats and made me cough. I brushed it away but it hung in the air like tear gas. I staggered back to bed and curled into myself like a kinked hair, knotted up on the inside, my eyes wide and wondering.
    Reopen my dad’s case? What the hell was he thinking? Where was he when the case was still fresh, when the people and places weren’t covered in denial and grime, the events untainted by their infamy? I knew where. Drunk in some godforsaken rented room, or sobbing it out with some tattooed hooker, always trying to forget. Maybe if Kevin could avoid prison after rehab, he could put his off-the-charts I.Q. to better use than trying to steer around a Subaru driven by a blotto, 17-year-old, lacrosse star. The young athlete had entered the New Jersey Turnpike going the wrong way on the same night that Kevin had decided to pay me a visit in New York City. Kevin had tried his damndest to avoid the kid, but Kevin was a Fennimore; we never landed on the lucky side of the rainbow. According to the skid marks, Kevin had managed a masterful swerve followed by a NASCAR-worthy spinout, but he who doesn’t die in that pathetic scenario loses. Kevin’s blood alcohol level tested on the edge of New Jersey’s stringent legal limit. At least they’d gone easy on him and put him in mandatory rehab first. With good behavior and positive counselor reports, he might get a lighter sentence, but he still needed to pay the price for killing a teenager while under the influence. Hardly a first in our family.

Chapter 3
     
    Allison… nineteen days earlier
     
    Of course I went to see my brother. The medium-security rehabilitation facility couldn’t have been more contradictory. Rusted, barbed wire fencing around a wildflower-dappled field. Armed guards stationed at posts festooned with climbing vines of trumpet honeysuckle. An architecturally impressive medieval building with the latest in bullet-proof, wired windows. Confined freedom. Open space with restricted boundaries. Pretty yet ugly. Even the name fought against itself: Drywaters. A clever play on drying out and getting sober? Probably didn’t sit well with the guys who abstained from the liquid poison and opted for the straight-to-the-vein high. The whole place made me itch inside where no fingernail could scratch it. As an inmate, I wouldn’t know whether to explore my inner feelings or hunker down in a