Prim sobers and recites, “Text you on the phone, like a normal person.”

Her education in modernity is going pretty well, all things considered. Charm and me take her on lots of long walks through town, pointing out crosswalks and traffic patterns. We wasted an entire day in Pam’s Corner Closet & More, explaining everything from fake fruit to microwaves. There have been some stumbling blocks (toilet paper, the internet, the whole concept of wage labor), but Prim is pretty sharp, it turns out, and I already knew she was brave.

In the evenings we tend to her cultural literacy by getting high and binging classic Disney movies and Austen adaptations (she agrees that the 2005 Pride and Prejudice is the superior version, because it is). Charm and Prim let me sit between them on the couch, my head on Charm’s shoulder, my feet slung over Prim’s legs, all our hands jostling in the popcorn bowl. It feels like all the slumber parties I never had growing up. It feels like a happy ending.

At Mom and Dad’s it mostly feels like an endless party. Dad keeps baking cakes for no reason, humming off-key in the kitchen; Mom uses up all her vacation days at work, rather than hoarding them for some looming medical emergency; we reinstitute family game night and I discover, to my deep dismay, that Mom has been going easy on me in Settlers of Catan for twenty-one years. She straight-up stole my longest road without even a flicker of remorse.

I have the nagging sense that there are things I should be doing—applying for jobs or joining the Peace Corps or meditating on the profound gift of time—but all I seem to want to do is lounge around Roseville with everyone I love most.

It takes me a while to realize I’m saying goodbye.

I’m putting away groceries with Dad one evening when I pull a fresh set of twin sheets out of the bag, still wrapped in plastic. “Are these for me?”

Dad is halfway inside the fridge, rearranging Tupperware to make room for the milk. “They were half off! I figured you wouldn’t want to take your old set with you. You’ve had them since what, middle school?”

I stare at the fridge door. “Am I … going somewhere?”

Dad reemerges with a pot of leftover lentils in one hand and limp celery in the other. He gives me a shrug and a smile that hangs a little crooked on his face, bittersweet. “You certainly don’t have to. I guess it just felt like you might, now that you have…” He shrugs again. I consider all the ways he might have ended that sentence: a future, a life, a story still untold.

“Huh. Yeah. I guess.” I feel it again, that sense of galaxies spinning around me, hanging like fruit ripe for the picking, and I know he’s right. I stack diced tomatoes on the counter in silence before clearing my throat. “Would you and Mom be … okay, with that?”