Big Sister and Grandma are situated side by side on the bottom step of the staircase, just a few feet away from the front door. They watch as guests appear with boxes wrapped in colorful paper and adorned with bows and ribbons, bags overflowing with tissue paper, thick envelopes with Little Sister’s name written on the front in loopy, last-minute letters. 

Big Sister asks Grandma who each person is. Grandma tells her that she doesn’t know. When Grandpa walks in, Grandma smiles and reaches her hand out for him to take, but as he walks past the staircase and into the kitchen, he passes right through her. He pauses and looks around when the chill runs down his spine, but shakes his head and continues through the ribbons that hang in a waterfall on the door frame. 

Grandma puts her arms around Big Sister to remind herself that there is still a realm in which she is real. 

Big Sister asks if they can go into the kitchen now that Grandpa is here. Grandma nods, and they go together. 

Mom and Dad stand on either side of Little Sister, who is seated at the head of the table with a sheet cake in front of her. The cake is a big rectangle covered in uneven white frosting with patchy swirls of pink and purple around the rim. Big Sister had watched Mom make it last night. Watched her get progressively more frustrated while buttercream stuck everywhere except the cake, watched her eyes turn red and her cheeks blotchy as she stuck in the candle that said 8. It was a new candle. Mom had never needed a candle for an 8-year-old before. Mom had never needed to buy a new candle for Little Sister.

Around 8:00, Mom had considered ordering a Walmart cake. She didn’t, instead became overwhelmed with thoughts about how Little Sister was now older than Big Sister ever was. Dad got home from work at 11 and found Mom asleep at the table with the cake still unfinished in front of her. Her hair was stuck in the buttercream, and her eyes were wet. Dad carried Mom to their bed, gave Little Sister a kiss on her forehead, and returned to the kitchen and the cake on the table. Big Sister sat next to him. He smoothed out the white frosting and added the swirls and the rim and splotchy lettering. When he went back to his bed, Big Sister went to hers. Little Sister never got rid of the bunk bed. 

Now Mom and Dad are smiling, and there would be no way for anyone to know what happened last night. They sing to Little Sister, and their voices don’t shake. They have no memories of singing an eighth happy birthday to Big Sister, and they can’t tell if that's better or worse. 

Grandma can’t look away from Grandpa, and she smiles because he is smiling. But then she frowns because it is not her who is making him smile, and part of her knows he will never smile because of her again. 

Big Sister can’t look away from Little Sister. Is she still Big Sister now that Little Sister is bigger than her? She remembers when she went to the hospital with Grandma and Grandpa to meet Little Sister for the first time. They got to grow up side by side for three years, but now Little Sister will keep growing and Big Sister won’t. She will be seven and three-quarters forever. She hopes Little Sister will get to grow to be as old as Grandpa is. 

When Little Sister blows out her candles, she looks straight into Big Sister’s eyes. Big Sister tugs on Grandma’s sleeve.

“She saw me,” she whispers. Grandma shakes her head, but Big Sister keeps insisting. “No. She looked at me. She did.”I slid my gaze from the road to the glove box, where I’d taped a picture of my kid taken just before the end. She was in a hospital bed, a headscarf wrapped around that little skull, and her eyes were so bright. She was five. She didn’t know what death really meant, what it would do to me and Joyce. How our marriage would dissolve. Now Joyce had the house with the room our daughter had lived in all her life, the backyard with the tire swing, the dog we’d bought together, and what did I have? Jack shit. 

I turned on the cruise control and groaned as I rolled my ankle. How long had I been driving? Felt like an eon or two, but the clock said 1:09. More like 1:04. The clock was fast, and I’d never cared enough to change it. That made it right at twelve hours since my last break. Five hours to go. I’d gone farther without a stop.

The trailer skidded a little to the left. I didn’t bother adjusting the wheel. If death was meant for me that night, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I’d stopped believing in anything a long time ago, after my daughter died. Scratch that. I believed in money, that it could solve my problems—if I could ever stop blowing it on lottery tickets—and in the tradition of a nice, stiff drink after work, but that was about it. No higher power or whatever people said existed somewhere up there above the clouds and looked down on me. The thought creeped me out. Someone, a god or my ancestors or whoever, had watched me do everything? Had seen what I’d done for money, had watched me risk what little I had left to drive coke and molly across the country for a small cut of what the bigwigs at corporate were getting? 

I imagined some guy who lived a thousand years ago with a comically large beard sitting on a cloud, shaking his huge head at me. I looked up and flipped my theoretical ancestor the bird, and was suddenly angry at myself. Why was I doing that? I wasn’t some schizo idiot. I didn’t think I was, at least, but maybe that was the truth. It didn’t matter; the ancient jackass wouldn’t be able to see me through the rain and dark clouds, anyway. Enough. Get a hold of yourself. 

I’d veered into the other lane while thinking about the cosmic joke. Some asshole honked at me and sped past me in his fancy ride, but I didn’t look to see who it was. I knew. It was some yuppie white man in fucking loafers off to his warm home in the ‘burbs. He had a dog and a kid, a live one. Maybe he was having an affair, and that’s why he was on the road so late. I smiled. 

And then I saw it in front of me like it was happening again. Jimmy was on the ground, his brains blown out and blood spattered on the warehouse wall. I hadn’t realized just how much blood was in a person, but I looked it up later. Supposedly it was only only a gallon, but Jimmy must’ve been some kind of medical wonder, considering it looked like at least two gallons of it

pooled around him and soaking into his shirt. My shirt. I’d lent it to him once, and Jimmy hadn’t ever given it back. 

I suddenly felt sick, like someone was twisting my guts around. I glanced up at an exit sign, but the picture of Jimmy’s body was still right there in the front of my mind. I shut my eyes and opened them real fast when I realized what the sign had said. Exit 120. Fuck. 

I swerved onto the exit ramp just before it was too late, the tires skidding over the wet road. I slammed on the brakes and the truck came to an easy stop. I made a right onto the narrow back road, like always, and began the final leg of the trip. 

I went on for a while before I drove under a streetlight. The windshield was covered in bird shit, but I could still see something in the middle of the road. I kept driving, though, and then there was this popping sound. The truck pulled to the left. I swerved to the right. A flat at this time of night on this creepy-ass road was just what would happen to me. I found a gravel driveway just up the road and parked. 

I sighed and opened the creaky door, then went around to the front, where the flat tire was. Rain soaked through my shirt. I thought of Jimmy. I bent down to look at the tire, and realized six or so of them had been punctured, all on the same side of the truck. I stood back up, rain dripping down my face, and then I knew. They were after me, that group my boss always vaguely referred to as “them,” as in “They’ll kill you if you let them.” I always imagined them as a group of guys from one of those old-timey movies dressed in all black who were supposed to look like bullies, but just looked stupid. 

I turned and looked through the trees all around me, packed solid as concrete. The woods were so dark, and my headlights were the only light source—the single streetlight I’d passed was a half mile back. I turned to climb back in the truck to get my gun.

I heard a gun fire, and I was on my back on the ground. Who’d been shot? It felt like someone hit my head with a fucking hammer. I sat up and touched the back of my head. It was sticky. I looked at my bloody hand and collapsed back onto the gravel. 

They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you go, but all I saw was my little girl’s face. I looked up at the black sky, suddenly wishing to whatever was up there that there was something after death, that I would see my daughter again. And I would finally get my shirt back from Jimmy, the thieving bastard.