“I wanted to hear the words,” she explains. “I knew how it ended, but I wanted to go slowly and see how it would all work itself out.” She yawns against her hand.

“How about I drive for this last bit?” I offer.

She pulls over and we swap places.

We’ve gone about a mile, just outside Kansas City, when she starts to cry. I don’t even notice at first, but at one point I lean over to adjust the radio and notice the wetness on her face, the trail of gleaming tears from the corner of her eye to the edge of her jaw.

I smell Ty’s cologne.

I wonder if Mom smells it. If that’s what’s set off her crying.

“Are you okay?” I ask her gently. “We can stop.”

She shakes her head and exhales in a shudder, then opens up her purse and starts to dig around for her pack of tissues. “I’m fine. It’s just . . .”

SMELL ME, says Ty’s cologne. I DEMAND TO BE SMELLED. SMELL ME NOW.

I glance in the rearview mirror, and then I see him, I see him clear as day, sitting in the backseat, his head against the window, like he always used to sit, looking out.

It’s a miracle that I don’t wreck the car.

Mom says, “It’s just that, I don’t know why we never did that before. Graceland. All these years we’ve been so close, a day’s drive, and we’ve never gone. Why didn’t we?”

Because Dad hates to travel, I think but do not say. Look up the word homebody in the dictionary, and there will be a picture of Dad.

“We should have gone,” Mom whispers, wiping at her face.

“We’ve gone now,” I answer shakily. “Graceland—check.”

“Yes, but I wish . . . ,” she says, and I know she wants to say we should have gone when Ty was alive.

But Ty hated Elvis. He didn’t appreciate being subjected to Mom’s obsession with the King. He said so many times.

My eyes flick back to the mirror.

Ty is still there. A chill runs through me like a trickle of ice water.

“Hey, uh, I think the lady in that red car behind us is texting,” I say. “That’s dangerous.”

Mom turns to look. She gazes right through where Ty is curled in the backseat. She turns back to me. “You should let her pass you. It’s always better to be behind the road hazard.”

I let the red car pass. Mom gives a disapproving look to the driver, but the lady doesn’t notice.

I try to keep my hands steady on the wheel.

Mom gets a tissue out of her purse and blows her nose. The tears keep coming, an endless river of grief. Ty stays with us too. All the way back to Nebraska.

25.

I WAIT. Until we’re unpacked. Until we’ve eaten dinner. Until Mom is asleep. Then I slip down into Ty’s room.

It’s quiet.

I look at the mirror. The clock radio. The shadow in the corner cast by the closet door.

He’s not here. But I want him to be.

“I want to talk to you,” I say. “Ty.”

Silence.

“Come on. We can’t run away, right? That’s what you were telling me today? That you’re always going to be there, hanging out in the backseat. Your smell. Your shadow. Your memory. That’s what you were trying to tell me, right? Well, I have things I want to say to you.” I sit at his desk and turn on the desk lamp, which is like a spotlight in the dark. “Come on, Ty. I did what you wanted. I gave the letter to Ashley. Now do what I want, for once.”

But there’s nothing. No sound. No smell. No Ty.

Which pisses me off even more. And it’s been a ranting kind of day.

I stand up. “You’re selfish,” I say into the darkness. “Do you know that? You’re the most selfish person I know. You didn’t even care, did you, about what this would do to Mom? Did you hear her saying her life is over? That’s on you. That’s on you, Ty. You’re no better than Dad is, you know. You just do whatever you feel like doing and to hell with the rest of us, right?”

My eyes are drawn to the mirror. For a split second I think I see him, a dark shape moving, but then I realize it’s my own reflection.

I stare at the Post-it.

Sorry Mom but I was below empty.

“What, you wanted to make some kind of grand romantic statement? You wanted to demonstrate to the world how much pain you were in?” The hole starts to crack open in my sternum but I push past it. “It’s not romantic. You blew a chunk of your chest out and died in a puddle of your own blood—does that sound romantic to you? The people cleaned it up, yeah, all right, but they left a bunch of soaked bloody paper towels in the garbage outside for Mom to find when she emptied the trash the next week. Romantic, right? What an awesome statement. Oh, and your body loses control of its bowels when you die, and you shit yourself, how fucking romantic is that? And the little girl next door, Emma, you know, she came outside when the ambulance drove up and she was there when they opened the garage door and she saw you like that. She’s six years old. Awesome statement you made there. Right this second you are worm food, and people have forgotten you, they don’t even remember you now, it’s all Patrick Murphy now, but they’ll forget him, too. They’ll move on. That’s what people do. You aren’t Jim Morrison, Ty. You don’t get to be some kind of tragic rock star who died young and everyone builds a shrine to. You get to be a stupid-ass kid. The only people who will remember your ‘statement’ are Mom and me, and that’s just because we hurt too much to forget. Yeah, other people are in pain too, dipshit. Everybody feels pain. You asshole.”