Across town, at the liquor store, Nath sets a fifth of whiskey on the counter. He has tasted alcohol exactly once in his life: at Harvard, his host student had offered him a beer.

He'd gulped down four, more excited by the idea of it than the flavor—it had tasted, to him, like fizzy urine—and for the rest of the evening, the room had wobbled slightly on its axis.

Now he wants the world to spin loose and careen away. The man behind the counter studies Nath's face, then squints at the bottle of whiskey. Nath's fingers twitch.

At eighteen, he is allowed to buy only three-two beer, that watery stuff his classmates chugged at parties. But 3.2 percent isn't strong enough for what he needs now.

The clerk eyes him again and Nath prepares himself: Go home, sonny, you're too young for this stuff. Instead the clerk says, "Your sister that girl who died?"

Nath's throat goes raw, like a wound. He nods, focusing on the shelf behind the counter, where cigarettes rise in neat red-and-white stacks.

Then the clerk takes down a second bottle of whiskey and puts it in a bag with the first.

He slides the bag toward Nath, along with the ten-dollar bill Nath has set on the counter. "Good luck to you," he says, and turns away.

The quietest spot Nath knows is out on the edge of town, near the county line. He parks by the side of the road and pulls out one of the bottles.

One gulp of whiskey, then another, burns its way down, and he pictures it torching away everything raw and red and painful inside him.

It's almost one, and by the time the first bottle is gone, only one car has passed by, a dark-green Studebaker with an old lady at the wheel. The whiskey isn't working the way he'd hoped.

He'd thought it would wipe his mind clean, like a sponge on a blackboard, but instead the world sharpens with each swallow, dizzying him with its details:

the spatter of mud on the driver's side mirror; the last digit of the odometer, frozen between 5 and 6; the stitching in the car seat, just beginning to fray. A stray leaf, caught between windshield and wiper, rattles in the breeze.

As he works through the second bottle, he thinks, suddenly, of his father's face as he'd walked out the door:

the way he hadn't even glanced at them, as if he were focused on something far-off on the horizon or deep, deep in the past.

Something neither he nor Hannah could see, something they couldn't touch even if they'd wanted to. The air inside the car grows thick, filling his lungs like cotton.

Nath cranks the window down. Then—as the cool breeze rushes in—he pitches over the side and vomits both bottles of whiskey onto the curb.

In his own car, James too mulls over that moment on the stairs. After he'd pulled out of the driveway, he had driven without thinking, jamming his foot onto the gas pedal, heading wherever he can slam his foot to the floor.

This is how he finds himself driving not back to Louisa's, but across town, right past campus, onto the highway, nudging the needle to sixty, sixty-five, seventy.

Only when a sign—Toledo 15 miles—flashes wide and green overhead does he realize how far he's gone. How appropriate, he thinks. Toledo.

It strikes him that there is a beautiful symmetry to life. Ten years ago, Marilyn had fled here, leaving everything behind. Now it is his turn. He takes a deep breath and presses the pedal more firmly.