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“She cried into the soup. “

“Jennifer Anne.”

I put my sister down. She looked up at me with big wet dark eyes, and I saw that she’d been crying too and had decided not to mention it. She was twenty years old, my baby sister, but in the yellow sweater, with her face all screwed up, she looked about eleven.

“You’re an idiot,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’re the best idiot in the world.”

“I know. “

“I love you.”

“Yeah.” I ruffled her hair and she smacked my hand. “Come on. Show me you’re alive.”

Delacroix Street is a quiet road of old money. Stone walls, iron gates, long drives lined with bare trees. Our house sits at the end of it, a wide gray manor with too many windows and a lawn my father has personally forbidden anyone to walk on. I grew up in it. I know every creaking stair. I could’ve found my way through it blind, in the dark, in my sleep, and for most of my life that was exactly how I’d navigated it: half asleep, half angry, sliding down banisters at dawn to avoid my father.

But I came in that night and stood in the foyer, in the smell of pot roast and beeswax, and the whole place felt a shade smaller and a shade warmer than it ever had. Like a coat I’d outgrown that had somehow turned out to fit.

“Lex!” My mother came flying out of the kitchen with flour to her elbows. “My little boy!”

“Mom, I’m six-one.”

“You are my six-one.” She took my face in her hands and kissed my forehead, both cheeks, my chin, and stood back to look. “You’re thin. They aren’t feeding you. That’s a bruise on your jaw. Who did that? Was it that horrible Minnesota boy?”

“Different horrible boy.”

“I hope he suffers.” She patted my cheek. “Dinner’s at seven. Your father’s at the office. He’ll be back at eight-thirty, and he’s going to want to talk to you about the quarterly, and you’re going to say ‘yes, sir,’ and eat your carrots.”

“I hate carrots.”

“You love carrots. You’ve simply forgotten.”

I laughed. It hurt my ribs.

“Was there a girl?” she said, lightly.

“Mom.”

“I’m only asking.”

“You’re always only asking.”

“You’re twenty-six! I want grandchildren! Jennifer’s boyfriend plays the ukulele. I have no hope there.”

“Tyler is a good person, “ said Jenny, indignantly, from the stairs.

“He owes a parking fine in Nova Scotia.”

“That’s a character flaw, Mom, not a crime.” She glanced at me. “Lex told me that.”

“Did he.” My mother’s gaze slid to me with a gleam I didn’t like. “Interesting. Your brother has been a wealth of wisdom lately. He’s been calling us every night this month, and every night he sounded like a man who’d swallowed a canary. He’s been texting. Jenny says she saw him smile at his phone.”

“I did not.”

“Once on the phone.”