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fit into one of those preppy outfits of yours. I’m too tall.”
    Too tall and too well filled out
.
    She paused. The twinkle was still there, although she hadn’t smiled yet. I kept staring at her. Surely she didn’t expect me to laugh at such a horribly tasteless joke. She wouldn’t have intentionally hurt my feelings for anything. Yet Mom’s funeral was barely over, and she didn’t seem to take it seriously anymore. What was with her?
    Then she added, “Besides that, only one funeral per visit is permitted.”
    That comment might have been equally tasteless, but it broke the tension. I cracked up. In my mind’s eye, I saw Aleesha driving home to Baltimore after Mom’s funeral, pulling into the driveway, and then backing out again without going inside. Just so she could return for my funeral in strict adherence to some silly rule about only one funeral per visit.
    She winked at me. Something about the way she’d told those two jokes made me realize she’d probably been testing my emotional reflexes rather than trying to be funny. I doubted that she’d found them anywhere close to normal.
    “As Mr. Scott pointed out, your only detectable symptom was sleep far too deep to be normal. You obviously heard us shouting at you. But it’s like you were fighting to remain asleep. I don’t know what’s normal for you at home, but you never slept that way in Santa María. So we left you alone and waited for you to wake up on your own.”
    I crooked one eyebrow as I searched her face for further clues. What was she trying to say?
    “I wish you could talk to my papa,” she said. “I’ll bet he could figure this out.”
    Your papa the psychiatrist? So now you think I’m nuts?
    She must have seen my grimace. “No, Kim, you’re as sane as I am.”
    I really cracked up then—I’d never known anyone who acted crazier than Aleesha—but she couldn’t have remained more completely straight-faced.
Okay, girl, so that wasn’t supposed to be a joke
.
    “Kim, I’m no psychologist, but I wonder if your strange little nap was purely physical.”
    Maybe her statement should have shocked me. Maybe it should have made me resentful or angry.
    But it didn’t.
    I’d just started wondering the same thing myself.

chapter twelve
    A leesha, didn’t you say west-to-east jet lag is worse than east-to-west?”
    She squinted at me as if trying to figure out the reason for my question. “Uh-huh.”
    “And didn’t you say jet lag doesn’t necessarily hit the hardest the day after travel?”
    She nodded ever so slightly without releasing her squint.
    I hoped my desperation wasn’t showing. “And it can last for days?”
    “Go ahead, girl. Spill it.”
    “I’m so tired today I can barely wiggle. I don’t feel like getting out of bed. Truth be told, I just want to go back to sleep.” “Mmm.”
    “Mmm, what? Is that jet lag or not?”
    “Could be. Or the aftershock of Miss Terri’s death. You haven’t had much of a chance to unwind, and things won’t be normal for a while—”
    The tears started spilling out. “They’re never going to be normal.”
    “You’re right,” she said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “Not like before, anyhow.” She paused and gave me a once-over. “Girl, you’re zoning out again now. Go on back to sleep. I’m going downstairs to do some cleaning, but I’ll be quiet.”
    “But I’d planned on doing that. I wanted to show Dad I can do just as good a job as Mom at taking care of him.”
    Aleesha looked at me with an expression that said,
“Your intentions are good, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. “
    That made me even more determined to prove myself to Dad.
    “Kim, baby, if you’re suffering jet lag—or any kind of lag—you may not feel much like housecleaning for a few more days. You go back to sleep and let me do it this time. I’ll gladly give the job back to you when you feel better.”
    I fell asleep so quickly I thought I was dreaming when she said,