I have been going ever since.

That phone call is why.

Part Eleven: Willa

The rehearsal dinner was at a place on Main Street in Placerville with a long room in the back, twenty-six people, chicken or salmon.

It went well.

That is worth saying, because everything after it was not.

Manny’s father made a toast in two languages and half of it was a joke about cabinets that landed better than it had any right to, and Ines cried, and Solveig filmed Ines crying, and my sister Ximena told a story about Odile at four that I have heard two hundred times and laughed at again.

At about nine-fifteen, Bea went outside.