The whole point of making friends outside of Abby and the girls from the swim team was that they would never have to know me as the sister of someone who died. They would never look at me like I was something sad and delicate. There wouldn’t be this constant awkwardness, this uncertainty about what to do or say. Even with Abby, someone I’d known since kindergarten and had told repeatedly that I just wanted my life to be normal. I would certainly never have a normal friendship with Kat if she was going to know my pain and I was going to know hers.

Presumably, because she wasn’t brand-new to the group, Cass didn’t make Kat do any sort of introduction. She didn’t volunteer to share, either. A couple of other people did. Madison, whose mom died of breast cancer, was always up for talking. It usually made her cry, but that didn’t seem to bother her. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than crying about Justin in front of strangers—well, anything other than losing Justin in the first place.

I barely paid attention, too busy wondering if Kat had recognized me. Probably not, right? She probably met a lot of people at shows and I was nondescript. Besides, it had been a few weeks and—

“Meredith?” Cass asked, and my whole body stiffened. Apparently Madison had finished talking and no one else had stepped up. It was my turn to fill the latest awkward silence. “Do you have a memory you’d be willing to share, something about your brother Justin?”

I glanced over at her. Like her voice, her brown eyes were kind but firm. Though she’d phrased her request as a question, it was clear that if I refused, there would be an uncomfortable conversation later, possibly a phone call to Aunt Holly.

Only eleven sessions left. I had to do this. I racked my brain for something easy and mindless to talk about. I should have come prepared.

“It can be an early memory,” Cass coached as I zeroed in on my mud-spattered, blue sneakers.

The color of them reminded me of the carriage I’d had for my dolls—the “babies” I refused to go anywhere without until the beginning of kindergarten. Made of quilted, periwinkle fabric, it was long enough so that one doll (Little Sister) could lay in the back and another (Big Brother) could sit in the front with his legs dangling from two round holes. It had a white shade dotted with cornflowers that often got stuck when I tried to adjust it to protect my babies from the sun. The wheels jammed a lot, too, making the carriage as difficult to navigate as a rusty shopping cart. Even the smooth berber carpet in our basement playroom proved hazardous. Big Brother kept falling backward and crushing Little Sister, which caused me to burst into tears on a regular basis.

One day my big brother went to his room and came back with the leather belt he wore when our parents forced him dress up for holidays and the occasional Sunday morning church visit. He wrapped it around the back of the doll and looped it through the leg holes, belting it in the front of the carriage.

“Now he has a seat belt. He won’t fall over. Everyone’s safe,” Justin declared.

“What about her?” I fretted, pointing to the small, bald doll that I put in a frilly yellow dress to make it clear to the world—my parents, brother, and the occasional kid I met at the park down the street—that she was a she. That poor doll slid all over the back of the carriage, banging her plastic head.

Justin studied her, his thick brown eyebrows knitting together over hazel eyes. He cradled his chin in his hand and drummed his forefinger against his cheek, deep in thought like he was an engineer designing a car safety system instead of an eight year-old boy whose four year-old sister’s wailing had interrupted his video game.

“I’ll be right back,” he told me. This time he returned with a sweater vest and a button down shirt—more of his own formal clothing. He carefully folded these, filling in the spaces around the doll, and said, “There you go. Now they’re both safe.”

Dad, who’d stopped his woodworking across the basement to watch Justin’s interaction with me and the dolls, always told this story to illustrate what a sweet, protective older brother he was.

Mom thought there was more to it. “It was all part of his scheme to do away with those clothes. The next time I asked him to dress up, he was all wide-eyed. ‘I can’t, Ma. Meredith needs that stuff for her dolls,’” she’d mimic with a laugh, playfully punching my brother in the tattooed bicep.

With my gaze still trained on my sneakers, I relayed the doll carriage seatbelt story to Cass and the rest of the circle exactly as my parents used to tell it. I included both of their interpretations, but left out the sheepish look Justin wore whenever it came up. How he’d shrug off my mom’s accusation with a smirk and say, “Mere always came first.” That was mine; I wasn’t sharing it.

At the end, Cass nodded, but her expression was flat and she didn’t say anything.

Was I supposed to continue? Whenever my parents mentioned the doll carriage, they went on to laugh about the way I used it in storms. Supposedly, I loaded it up at the first rumble of thunder. In case we needed to make an escape, I wanted to have all of my prized possessions ready to go. Blankie, Bear, my favorite books—they all went in the carriage. I imagined that Big Brother doll remained strapped in the front, safe and secure, the sentinel looking out for everything else. But I didn’t remember any specific storms. In truth, the whole doll carriage thing wasn’t even my memory, just a story I’d been told so many times that I tricked myself into thinking I could recall it as vividly as the rest of my family seemed to.

And Cass had figured that out.

“Thank you for sharing, Meredith,” she began, letting me believe that I’d done what she wanted and could get back to being invisible. Then she tacked on, “You definitely painted a picture of what Justin was like as a child in that story, but I got the sense that was more…family lore. I’d really like to hear one of your memories of Justin, rather than a story your parents tell about the two of you.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. I hated Cass. Even though she looked cool with her long, coffee-colored dreads and her heavily tattooed arms—big, black boot prints and an angry Medusa head on one and a birdcage surrounded by flowers on the other—she was still a shrink with an agenda. She either wanted me to talk for half the session or talk about What Happened even though she claimed that I didn’t have to do that until I was ready. Well, I wasn’t going there. She’d said it could be an early memory and that’s what I would give her.

“Let me think for a second,” I said, tugging at my messy ponytail.