When he opened the door to his father’s room, Jett was surprised to find it exactly as he remembered. He figured his father would have done a complete overhaul—rearranged the furniture, hung new curtains, put out new bedding. But the room was untouched. It even smelled of her, like cinnamon candles and peach shampoo. There was her hairbrush on the bureau. There was her hair.

“Do you mind if I go to the bathroom?” Roni was asking. “To freshen up?”

Women were always saying this in movies, and Jett hated them for it. When did a man ever ask to freshen up? Why couldn’t someone just be naturally fresh? Further, Jett didn’t like the idea of her in his mother’s bathroom. But what could he do? He told her to go ahead and watched as she went into the bathroom—the bathroom with the Jacuzzi tub his mom once filled with oatmeal when he had the chickenpox—and shut the door.

* * *

Roni smiled to herself in the mirror. She was in Mr. Kaplan’s bathroom, and so far, she hadn’t had to do anything too unsavory to get there. She was sure Jett would expect something of her soon enough, but she would deal with him when the time came. Now, she focused her attention on the bathroom. It was a big bathroom, equipped with what her mother called a bubble tub. The washroom led into a dark, cedar closet. The left side clearly belonged to Jett’s father, whose shirts hung like a procession of deflated cotton ghosts. Everything was tidy, down to the row of leather shoes beneath the shirts, in the place where the ghosts’ feet would have gone. And then there was the other side of the closet, the side that had belonged to Jett’s mother. Her clothes were everywhere—balled up on the floor, half-hanging from hangers, erupting from a plastic laundry basket. At the far end hung a white dress covered in a million translucent beads, like fish eggs. Roni opened the top drawer of the dresser and found that it too was separated. On the left was a row of Mr. Kaplan’s neatly folded boxer briefs. On the right, a haphazard assortment of panties: silk, cotton, lace. Buried among them was a small white tube. Thinking it was lotion, Roni undid the crusted cap and brought the tube to her nose. The smell was awful, like medicine. She looked at the label. VAGINAL ITCH RELIEF CREAM. Roni replaced the tube and put it back in the drawer. How sad, she thought. A dead woman’s itch cream.

“Roni?” Jett called from the bedroom.

“Just a second,” she said, and quickly grabbed the first pair of Mr. Kaplan’s underwear she could find—a pair of navy blue briefs. Having nowhere else to put them, she stuffed them into her shorts, down the backside.

Jett was lying on the bed, belly-up, with his hands crossed over his chest. When she came out he sat up onto his elbows and smiled at her. “Hey,” he said.