“Where did I learn my cliches?” She was looking in the mirror. Her face was blank and shone from water.

“What do you mean?”

“Love never dies. Hope springs eternal. The one thing we should have learned by now is to put a seat belt around our heart. The road is dangerous but we never put the damned seat belt on.”

“Zoe—”

“He said something to me once I’ll never forget. He said, ‘We’ll start to reminisce when we’re a hundred and four because till then we’ll be too busy.’ I was going to bring Hector tonight. He could have come. But I thought about Kevin, you know, and maybe there was a chance that something might happen… so I didn’t.”

Where was my wisdom? I kept licking my lips and scouring my brain but nothing came. She continued to look blankly in the mirror, as if seeing her face for the first time.

The door opened and Kathy Herlth sauntered in. She was as gorgeous as ever but still carried the icy wind of disdain for everything on earth that froze the rest of us humanity to death.

“God, did you see Kevin Hamilton? He’s got to change his lobotomist! He’s standing out there talking like a Klingon. Sort of looks like one too.”

It was so cruel and true that Zoe coughed out a huge laugh. I did too.

Kathy shrugged. “I knew I shouldn’t have come to this. It’s so depressing. You two have sure come full circle tonight. Kevin’s mad and James is dead. That ends that chapter, huh?”

“What?” The word came out much slower than I wanted. My hand froze as I was about to wipe tears of laughter off my cheek. I looked at my hand when she spoke again. It had already made a fist. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything.

She looked surprised. “What do you mean? About what?”

“About James.”

“James? What about him? Oh God, Miranda, didn’t you know? He’s dead. He died three years ago. In a car crash.”

Everything was so clear, incredibly sharp and accentuated: Zoe’s gasp, the sound of water hissing in the sink, Kathy’s high-heel scrape across the tile floor. Their faces—Kathy’s cool but interested, Zoe shocked beyond her own new trauma. These things were clear, but some essential part of me had already left. Something left my body and floating high above the room looked down, taking one last glimpse before leaving forever.

The part that had loved James Stillman with the energy and abandon only beginners have. The part that had smoked twenty delicious cigarettes a day, laughed too loud, didn’t worry about dangerous things. The part that wondered what sex would be like and who would be the first. The part that looked too long in mirrors at the only flawless face I would ever see there.

Fearless teenage me, so sure one day I’d find a partner with whom my heart would rest happily ever after. A man I would put on like lotion. James taught me that, showed me great happiness was possible right from the beginning. He was dead.

“Jesus, Miranda, I thought you knew. It happened so long ago.”

“How—” I stopped to swallow. My throat was dry as cork. “Um, how did it happen?”

“I don’t know. Diana Wise told me. But she’s here tonight! You can ask. I saw her before.”

Without another word, I walked out of the room. Zoe said something but I kept going. I needed to find Diana Wise immediately. Without the facts, a precise description, James Stillman’s death would stay liquid in my brain and it had to be solid, real.

Hadn’t the ballroom been billiard-chalk blue before I’d gone into the bathroom? Blue with white borders? I could have sworn it was; yet now it was a weak ocher, the color of young carrots. Even the colors had changed with the terrible news.

People mulled around talking, laughing, and dancing. Tonight they could be eighteen and thirty-three at the same time. It was wonderful. Mouths were full of teeth and shiny tongues. Words surrounded me as I moved. I felt like a visitor from another planet.

“They moved to Dobbs Ferry—”

“I haven’t seen him since, Jesus, I don’t know—”

“The whole house was carpeted with the most ugly brown shag—”

When we were eighteen, people still listened to records. There were three speeds on a record player: 33 1/3, 45, and 78. The only time you ever used 78 was when you wanted to laugh. You turned it up there and played 45s on it. Hearing familiar voices transformed to a high silly chirp was always good for a laugh. As I walked more and more quickly through the room searching for Diana, thinking about James, thinking about him dead, the world around me switched to 78. Voices became a speeded-up muddle. This whizzing chaos became so strong that I had to stop and close my eyes. I breathed deeply a few times, telling myself not to panic. When I opened my eyes, Zoe was standing in front of me.

“Are you okay?”

“No. Have you seen Diana? I can’t find her.”

“We will. Come on, she’s got to be here.” She took my hand and we walked together. Later, when my mind cleared, I thought, How kind of her. Zoe had had her own nightmare only minutes before. Yet here she was, holding my hand and helping when she could just as well have been shut off in her own pain from meeting Kevin Hamilton.

“There! Over there.”

Unlike so many others at the reunion, Diana Wise looked almost exactly as she had when we were in school. Interesting face, long black hair, the sexy smile of an Italian movie star. We had been almost-friends in high school, but she was so much maturer than we that we had always held her in awe.

“Diana?” She was talking to a man I didn’t recognize. Hearing her name, she turned and saw me. Touching the guy on the hand as a good-bye, she took me by the arm.

“Miranda. I’ve been looking for you.” Her voice was strong and assured. The expression on her face said she knew what I needed. I was grateful not to have to ask the question. Not to have to say the words out loud, into the world: Is it true? Is he really dead?

The three of us walked through the lobby back out into the summer evening. It was warm and beautiful, the air still heavy from the day and full of the voluptuous smell of honeysuckle. I was empty and scared. I knew what was coming. Even though answers were what I wanted, I knew that when I heard them there would be no way back to a part of my life that, until a few hours before, was still intact.

“Diana, what happened to James? How did it…” I couldn’t say any more.

She put a hand into her long black hair and drew it slowly away from her face. “I bumped into him a few years ago in Philadelphia. He was working for a company that had something to do with art—selling it, dealing it? I don’t really remember. Maybe it was an auction house, like Sotheby’s. Anyway, we ran into each other on the street. He loved what he was doing. He was so revved up. Remember how excited he could get about things?”

I wanted to tell her how I’d seen that excitement, seen his whole being glow about something that had grabbed his attention.

“We were both in a rush and only able to have a quick cup of coffee together. He sounded wonderful, Miranda. Said for the first time in his life he felt like he was on the right track. Things were where he wanted them. He had a girlfriend. He was absolutely up, you know?”

“How did he look?” I wanted a picture, an image of him grown up I could hold on to.

“Older of course, thinner than he was in school, but still those great eyes and smile.” She paused. “He looked like James.”

I began to weep. Those words held everything I did and did not want to hear. Zoe put her arms around me. The three of us stood on the lawn, a few feet—and light-years away from all the happiness and goodwill inside the building.

When my storm had mostly passed, I asked Diana to go on.

“We exchanged numbers and promised to stay in touch. We called a couple of times but I didn’t go back to Philadelphia, and who ever comes to Kalamazoo?