His lecture is long and detailed, teaching all of us way more than we ever wanted to know about minimum-security federal penitentiaries. The ways to structure your life as an inmate, like waking up early while there’s still fresh toilet paper, and avoiding team sports so you won’t find yourself in front of the prison doctor. To ration your commissary funds, because they tend to go fast. How you need to make allies instead of friends.

I watch my mother’s face as he talks. She looks both riveted and nauseated. Maybe reality is finally sinking in.

“I hate to admit when I’m wrong,” Isla says, once Michael has finished and asks if we have any questions. “But Aunt Candy did good this time, for once. Thank you for that. Super informative. I give it five stars on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Ignore Isla. She’s just angry,” my dad says dismissively, and as soon as the words are out of his mouth, I can tell that my father, in his usual blunt carelessness, has without noticing lit a match. I feel Isla tense next to me—her teammate has veered to the other side—and so I put my hand on hers, in what I hope she’ll understand is a calm down, I got your back gesture. She shakes me off. She stands up so quickly that so does Fluffernutter, barking.

“Of course I’m angry,” Isla says. She’s been dancing on the edge all morning, all week, and we’re going to see her jump. “I’m freaking livid.”

“Isla, please sit down,” my dad says, and I can tell by the way his words come out that he’s too tired, too broken to put out this fire, even though normally he relishes his role as the family mediator. He likes to play the levelheaded dad smoothing out the hotheaded women around him, just like dads do on sitcoms.