“A bikini?” I laugh. “I’m afraid I didn’t pack one.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Uh oh. It’ll have to be skinny dipping, then.”

I laugh, and he grins as he lays me down across the bed.

*

Some time later, we’re half-dozing when raised voices outside pull me back to reality. It’s Abigail: Mom’s room is just across the hallway, and they’re arguing with the door open.

“—think I can just snap my fingers and forgive you and then things would be okay?” my sister is saying, her voice getting louder. “But that’s not how it works! Nothing can just go back. So I don’t have room to deal with your emotions, Mom, and whatever it is you want from me right now!”

I hear a door slam and angry footsteps—Abigail’s, no doubt—in the corridor outside. I lie still for a few moments, wondering if I should just let them be, but then I sigh and lever myself out of bed, glancing behind me to where Oliver’s still dozing. I place his arm back around a pillow and slip on my shoes, then go knock on Mom’s door.

She opens it looking apprehensive.

“Oh,” she says, and glances along the corridor.

“Just me,” I say.

She shakes her head.

“Can you talk to her, Gillian? I don’t know what to do. She’s…she’s just so unhappy right now.”

I hesitate. “I’ll talk to her,” I say. “But I don’t know that it’ll help.”

Soon I’m knocking on the door at the end of the hall. Sam opens it, the television on loud behind him.

“They were arguing, weren’t they?” he says. “Mom’s in the bathroom.”

“Gillian, is that you?” Abigail’s voice sounds muffled; the tap runs for a few moments and she comes out, red-eyed. “What is it?”

“I…do you want to talk?” I say, and gesture outside her room. Not in front of Sam.

She sighs, doesn’t answer right away.

“Sam, are you okay watching TV for a bit?”

He nods, his eyes panning from me to his mom.

“Just for a few minutes,” I reassure him.

Abigail closes the door, and the two of us find a space nearby on an empty stairwell, sitting on the thinly carpeted steps with our backs against the wall.

“Abigail…what’s happening? Are you okay?”

“No,” she says shortly.

“It’s…a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

She leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes.