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Simon cuts his tart in half and moves one piece onto Jamie’s plate when Jamie looks toward the hydrangeas.

Jamie finds it a moment later. He looks at Simon. Simon is busy adjusting the basil beside the serving plate.

I drink my lemonade. The paper straw begins dissolving before Oliver finishes the first poem.

Simon watches the end collapse against the ice. “I told you.”

“It remained functional for the necessary interval,” Oliver says.

“It’s turning into pulp.”

“That’s the intended biodegradation.”

“Not while I’m drinking through it.”

Jamie offers Simon his flamingo umbrella as a replacement.

Simon puts it behind Jamie’s ear.

The little pink bird disappears among the white flowers. Jamie leaves it there.

A car passes on the road beyond the fence. Oliver looks up from the book. It’s not Juney’s. He returns to the poem.

The hydrangeas move in the warm wind. Six former Jamies lie beneath their roots, close enough to hear the one who survived laugh when Simon finds another umbrella hidden beneath his napkin.

The roses bloom over three Olivers. The fourth turns the page.

Simon’s garden grows over the grave I prepared for him. He clips rosemary from above the place his chest would have rested and uses it to decorate the serving plate. Nothing is wasted.

Jamie steals a strawberry from my tart. I catch his wrist before he reaches his mouth. His eyes move from my hand to my face. The strawberry waits between his fingers.

“Ask.”

“May I have it?”

I take the strawberry from him.

Simon looks across the table. Oliver stops reading with one finger holding his place.

I lift the berry to Jamie’s mouth. “Bite.”

Jamie obeys.

My first doll bit me. These three only bite when I tell them to.