I was trying to catch Iris’s eye, to indicate that she, Ben, Merit, and Emma needed to get out of here. But I could intuit in that way a mother can that every single one of them was ignoring me. Who could blame them? This was better than reality TV. If it wasn’t happening to my friends, obviously.

“I just don’t understand,” Alice said, fixed on Julie.

Julie’s face was red. “Alice, I mean it, I don’t want to leave. I just thought it was time for your next chapter.”

Alice smiled sadly down at her hands, and Julie picked up: “I see you with Elliott. You can’t let him go again for us.”

Alice nodded and looked as if she were about to speak. But then Delia said, “Plus, it’s high time that my daughter and my grandchildren were with me.”

“Delia, what about when she was practically poverty-stricken? Was it not time then?” Alice asked. She stopped, and I saw something dawn on her. She laughed. “Oh, I see. Now that Julie can help out with the bills, you want them to be with you.” She looked at Julie. “If you want to be on your own, fine. Be on your own. But do not let her take what you have worked so hard to build back up. I mean it, Julie.”

Julie looked like she was holding her breath, her head swiveling from her mother to her aunt and back again.

Alice put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to feel stuck in the middle of our problems.” She took a deep breath. “If you want to go with your mother, then that’s fine. You know I get scared about being alone and—”

“You aren’t going to be alone,” Julie said.

“Well, with Charlotte and Iris moving back to New York and—” Alice gasped, clasping her hand over her mouth.

My jaw dropped.

Suddenly, all the eyes in the room I couldn’t get to look at me before were now laser-focused. Iris jumped up from the table. “What? Is that true?”

I let out a deep sigh. “Honey, nothing is decided yet. But obviously our future is looking a little different, and I have to think about what’s best for the two of us.”

“Fine. Then I’ll go live with Dad.”

“In jail?” I asked. Maybe not the right thing to say to a volatile teenager, but honest to God.

Iris’s face turned red. “Mom, I love it here and I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back to New York!”