Free Reunion: A Novel by Hannah Pittard Page A

world, feels more an extension of the house and the clutter of the house than it does a gateway to the outside. If I were on set, I’d say as much to the location scout.
    There are coffee cups and coffee cans. There are two small sofas forming an L against the back and side walls. And near the screen door, with ashtrays at its side, is the old white rocking chair that I know for a fact is the one from my bedroom when I was a baby. It was in my sister’s bedroom before that. And in my brother’s bedroom before that. I remember, as a kid, having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that it didn’t belong to me, that I hadn’t been the first baby rocked to sleep in it.
    On the screen above the rocker, there is a large, dark, circular stain, off center of which is a small circular tear, but that’s it. There is no other evidence of anything out here. There is no evidence of a suicide. No evidence of a gunshot.
    I look at Nell. She’s staring at the stain.
    “Here,” I say. I hand her the bourbon we found under the sink.
    “You think it’s safe to drink?” she says.
    “Like maybe he poisoned it?”
    She smiles but doesn’t look at me. She does, though, take the bottle.
    “No.” She pulls a long swallow. Long and slow enough to make me think there are things—maybe many things—I don’t know about my sister as the person she is now. “Safe, as in, I was thinking it might be swill,” she says. “But it’s good.”
    “Tasty,” I say, which is a callback to a joke about Whitney. I don’t remember the specifics, only that it was a word she couldn’t stand to hear. Tasty. Moist. Brainstorming. There was a whole slew of words that, when used, would throw her into a frenzy.
    “I talked to Elliot about this on the plane,” she says.
    “Irmus,” I say.
    “What?”
    “Irmus,” I say. “When you reveal the meaning at the end.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    I take the bottle, steal a quick sip, then hand it back to her. I feel a keen desire to get Nell drunk. “You said, ‘I talked to Elliot about this on the plane,’ but you haven’t yet said what this is. Presumably you are now going to define ‘this.’”
    “Do your students have any idea what you’re talking about?”
    “No,” I say. “Nope. Not a word.”
    “Are they any good?”
    “You mean, can they write?”
    “Yes,” she says.
    I point at the bottom of the bottle and swing my finger upward, indicating that she should drink. She does as directed.
    “Yeah,” I say. “They can.” And it’s true. They can. It gives me hope.
    “Irmus,” she says.
    I nod.
    “Right, well, what I already talked to Elliot about is the funeral.”
    “Okay.”
    “Sasha would like—”
    I take a deep breath. I am being deliberately dramatic and she knows it.
    “Give me a chance.”
    “Yes, yes.”
    The crickets have started. I forgot about crickets. In Chicago there are no crickets. Not where I live. But here in Atlanta, even in the middle of the city, you can’t quiet the crickets. I should remember this. The next time someone asks what Atlanta is like, I should say, “It sounds like crickets.” It’s the kind of statement that wins a person friends. In Hollywood, it’s the kind of thing people remember you for. Or maybe I’m giving the sentence too much credit. Regardless. It’s true. It sounds like crickets.
    “Sasha wants to have an open casket.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No.”
    I watch her face for some hint that this is a joke, but she holds my gaze and doesn’t seem to mind waiting for my brain to wrap itself around this ridiculous idea.
    “But his skull.” I make a circling figure with my finger at the side of my head.
    “I talked to her while we were on the ground in Denver. She’s talked to the funeral director and he seems confident that their guy can put it back together.”
    I don’t want to give in, but I feel the repetitions starting again.
    “Put it back together?”
    She nods slowly, then hands me