Their lives collapse on a Tuesday night. This is what her mother insists on, with sobs, in her denial that is not yet accompanied by mourning, under the blinding lights of the hospital corridor. The tiles are gray from too much rubbing, and the sky looks purple through the gaps in the blinds. The sun has almost risen, and Rosie stands by the window feeling half of herself has withdrawn to a place she didn’t know existed. But it is Tuesday, her mother tells the doctor. She also tells him that her son does not leave the house on Tuesdays. And the doctor, kind and well-trained, reaches out to take her mother’s arm, and Rosie notices how well-groomed his nails are, how smooth, rounded, and perfectly clean. She wants nails like that too. She wants to be as kind, good, and discreet as this doctor; she wants to be able to touch her mother’s arm and lead her home, once they somehow manage to realize this news, this unbearable, this unbearable news.

But, of course, it will take years for something to give them the feeling of home again, Rosie knows this, she realizes it at that very moment as she looks at the doctor’s hands, the properly buttoned buttons on his shirt cuffs. Nothing, ever, will be exactly as it was before. Nothing can be ordinary or carefree or simple again, even though it was just a Tuesday, even though she has music class in three hours, even though the keys are still in the pocket of her jacket. She thinks of his fingerprints all over them. She sincerely wishes her brother hadn’t felt anything when he fell.