Page 87 of Under Story

“Well, maybe we can find some party pants.” Laurel lifts a pair of velvet leggings. “These are nice.”

“They don’t fit anymore. They’re too big.”

The phrase is innocuous enough in Laurel’s universe, but she’s rattled by what it implies here. Hazel picks at a thread on her pajama pants.

“You know what?” says Laurel. “It’s your birthday, and that means you’re the queen. You can stay in your pajamas, if you want. We can even call off the party.”

Hazel’s relief is obvious. “Can we really?”

Laurel and Maisie call the other parents. Only Eli joins them. Noah serves punch from a cauldron, and Maisie mummifies veggie dogs with strips of puff pastry. Hazel, who wears a witch’s hat with her pajamas, asks Laurel to push her on the tire swing. Frankie razes the party table of candy corn.

“She used to have brains,” says Hazel, watching. “She acts so stupid now.”

“That’s not very nice,” Laurel says.

Nori, the black-and-white cat, trots over from the porch. Frankie trails behind with a fist of candy corn. She wears an uncertain expression.

“What’s he called?” Frankie asks.

“You know what he’s called,” says Laurel.

Two months earlier, she and Eli came to Maisie’s house for New Year’s. Frankie spent the evening following Nori, shouting his name.

But now she starts to cry.

“Told you,” says Hazel.

Maisie runs over from the picnic table. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Laurel says. “Frankie forgot Nori’s name.”

But she knows it isn’t nothing. The look on Frankie’s face reminds her of Eli’s grandfather. Samuel Rosen had been an engineer before he was diagnosed with dementia. By the time Laurel met him, he didn’t recognize his relatives.

Noah brings Frankie to her bedroom with an iPad. Eli pushes Hazel on the swing. Maisie pulls Laurel into the kitchen, where she begins to weep.

“Oh, Maisie,” Laurel says. She opens her arms, and Maisie folds into them.

“I’m thinking of how it was in the beginning,” Maisie says, “when they took care of us. I tell myself that this doesn’t have to feel like a funeral, that every stage of life is worth celebrating, but how can we just stand there and watch?”

Was Maisie carried to Hazel or Frankie’s door, as Helen was brought to Beth’s? Laurel can avoid the truth no longer: Frankie and Hazel are becoming smaller children.

“There was one time,” Maisie continues, “when I was very old…Hazel would have been in her fifties; and I was crying about something I wanted, something I couldn’t articulate. It was an awful feeling. You remember—how hard everything felt back then? Your mind is constantly foggy, and your body’s held together with tape. I mean, with the cataracts, I could barely see! And Hazel was so patient. No wonder she was the one to keep us at home. Frankie had her limitations, and she was a wild child, always touring with the band; I don’t think she even had a permanent address. At the time, I was hurt, but when your own parents are born, you see how hard it is to be a caretaker. Look at Clare, for example: you knew that she’d be better off at Progress.”

Not far from Laurel’s house is a building that reads Progress Senior Living.

“I put her in a nursing home,” says Laurel, piecing it together as she speaks.

“I don’t blame you,” says Maisie quickly. “Not at all. I only meant that’s why I coddle Hazel now. She asked for this party, I swear. I don’t know why she changed her mind.”

Laurel rubs Maisie’s back in circles. “You’re doing the best job anyone could.”

“Thank you,” Maisie says. Then she peels back to look at Laurel. “God, I hope I’m not being insensitive. My girls are still here.”

My girls are still here: the phrase doesn’t make sense. Maisie wouldn’t know about Silas. Laurel tucks the question away. She and Eli need to stay focused. Whatever Maisie meant had to do with Laurel Two, not her.

“Of course you aren’t,” says Laurel. It’s easy to be loyal: her love for Maisie is as effortless as ever. She wipes Maisie’s tears the way she did when they were teens, bringing her thumbs to the lashes to catch any smeared eye makeup. Maisie stands still, docile; she even smiles weakly.

“You know what it is?” she says. “I just disagree with this part of life.”