A mix of sandalwood and basil and a hint of lemon.

Brut.

I smell my brother’s cologne.

10.

SOMEONE’S KNOCKING ON THE FRONT DOOR.

I ignore it. I’ve got my hands full, literally. My sleeves are rolled up, and I’m wearing the rubber gloves and apron and everything, up to my elbows in hot, soapy water, in the middle of the mountain of dishes that’s been piling up on our kitchen counter all week, since neither Mom nor I have the energy for dishes.

I haven’t been sleeping well.

Now, I’ve decided, is not a good time for a visit from the sympathy parade.

Whoever-it-is pounds on the door again.

I’m annoyed. Mom’s still asleep. Yes, it’s after three o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday, but she’s been out cold all day. She didn’t even get up for church, which is a bad sign. Until now she’s always managed to get up for God.

The knock comes again.

Hey, that’s okay, I think, still ignoring it, putting a dish in the dishwasher. Mom doesn’t have to go to church. We’re allowed to be antisocial. We’re permitted to sleep as much as we want to. We get a pass. It’s the only real perk that comes with the whole lose-your-brother gig: an indeterminate amount of time to make excuses. I don’t have to open the door.

But this knock. It’s loud. Persistent. A knock that isn’t going away anytime soon.

Then it occurs to me that whoever-it-is could be bringing us dinner. That’s how American culture teaches people to deal with a death: They bring a casserole. A pie. A fruit salad. This ritual provides the person giving it the feeling that they’ve done something useful for us. They’ve fed us. That’s how they show us they care.

The first week people cared a lot. We had so much food that most of it went bad before we could eat it. Mom and I weren’t even remotely hungry at that point; we just kind of sat in various positions on various pieces of furniture, and people would orbit around us, bringing us tissues, water, every few hours asking us if we thought we might eat something. I always waved the food away, but Mom tried. She wanted to be polite. I’d watch her sit at the table, forcing herself to go through the motions of eating, chewing each bite carefully, swallowing, trying to smile and reaffirm how good she thought it was, how very thoughtful.

The second week the people were mostly gone, and we picked at the best stuff they’d left us: the chocolate cream pies, the roast chickens, the sweet rolls. I tossed the rest. By the third or fourth week I started to get a bit of my appetite back, but right about then was when the food stopped coming.

People move on with their lives.

Even if we can’t.

Which is too bad, since I can’t cook to save my life, and Mom’s becoming less and less reliable in that department.

I’m suddenly hopeful as I go to answer the door. A casserole sounds amazing. I’m starved.

I open the door, and there’s Sadie McIntyre, our neighbor from three doors down. Voilà. But something’s off. She doesn’t follow the regular visitor protocol when she sees me, doesn’t smile, doesn’t ask how I am. She’s not holding a plate of cookies or a pan of enchiladas or any kind of offering whatsoever. She’s just standing there, one leg crossed over the other, staring at me with bright blue eyes, her expression neutral.

“Hi?” I say, a question.

“I’m going to Jamba Juice,” she says in her cigarette-husky voice. “Do you want to go?”

This request makes no sense for a number of reasons:

1. It’s February. In Nebraska. Today’s a particularly chilly one; my cracked phone reports that it’s hovering at around four degrees right now. Fahrenheit. When Sadie asks me, the question comes in a puff of steam.

Do you want to go to Jamba Juice?

Presumably to get a frozen drink.

2. Sadie and I haven’t spent any real time together since elementary school.

When we were kids, when we were really little, I mean, we practically lived at each other’s houses. I had my own secret path from my back door, across Mr. Croft’s porch, along the big stone wall that stretches across Mrs. Widdison’s backyard, through a gap in the lilac bushes that edges the McIntyres’ property, and across their lawn to Sadie’s bedroom window. I could have walked that route in my sleep.

Sadie was my first friend. I can’t even remember a time before I knew her, although our parents liked to tell a story about how Sadie ran away from home when she was two and ended up in our backyard sandbox, which is how we met. A firecracker was what my parents called Sadie. She was my best friend for years. If the other kids called me Four Eyes or Coke Bottles or Squinty (the glasses were a big liability back then), I could always rely on Sadie to come to my defense. She had four older brothers, and if anybody picked on either one of us, Sadie would set her brothers on the bully the way you sic a pack of dogs. I survived elementary school, in large part, on account of Sadie and the McIntyre boys.

I can still picture Sadie from those days: scrawny and tan, her curly, float-away hair bleached almost white by the summer sun, wearing a clean but faded T-shirt handed down by one of her brothers, which was always so long on her it would flap at her knees as she ran. Sadie loved to run. She never walked anywhere if she could get away with running there. And because I liked her so much, and because she was my friend, I always ran after her.

Until one day, when Sadie stopped running. She got a bike, and picked up a paper route from her older brother, so she could buy her own clothes when she started sixth grade. She started wearing makeup, and smiling in a different way. She made herself over into a whole new Sadie.