I hoped Conrad listened to me. I hoped I never saw him again. If I ever had to look at him again, if he looked at me the way he did that day, it would break me.
chapter six
JULY 3
When the phone rang early the next morning, my first thought was, The only kind of calls you get this early in the morning are the bad ones. I was right, sort of.
I think I was still in a dream state when I heard his voice. For one long second, I thought it was Conrad, and for that second, I could not catch my breath. Conrad calling me again—that was enough to make me forget how to breathe. But it wasn’t Conrad. It was Jeremiah.
They were brothers, after all; their voices were alike. Alike but not the same. He, Jeremiah, said, “Belly, it’s Jeremiah. Conrad’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Suddenly I was
