I glanced up at the side of our brick apartment building. It’d been home for a while, a good home at that, but I was ready to leave it behind, just like I was ready to leave the town and 99 percent of its denizens behind. No Aaron. No Samantha. No tiny little high school where everyone knew what everyone else was doing all the time. All the worthwhile things were coming with me to Stonington.

Devi. My mom. My stuff.

My fetus.

And a big-ass forty-two-inch flat-screen.

The move-in went exactly how Mom and I knew it would, which meant Mormor was a huge pain, barking orders about where everything should go and making those of us actually doing the moving and unpacking crazy. Dishes were to be put in the pantry and only the pantry until Mormor could go through them and decide if they deserved a spot among the Williams Sonoma elite inside her cabinets. Linens would receive the same scrutiny, so put them in the upstairs hallway until sorting time. Although she hadn’t even wanted the new TV, its placement on the new wooden TV stand—which she had bought on her own because she didn’t trust Mom to honor the farmhouse decor—had to be precise or it threw off her entire aesthetic.

“A little to the left, a little more to the left, a little more to the left” would haunt me in my nightmares.

Suffice to say, she’d talked so much during the move, she’d sucked most of the oxygen out of the house, leaving the rest of us gasping. By the time Devi brought the last of my stuff up into my new room, she was hot, sweaty and super annoyed.

“I think I owe you a few more cheeseburgers,” I said sheepishly, folding my T-shirts and putting them in my new dresser.

“Yeah, like a few thousand. That woman needs an exorcism.” Devi shoved a pile of my clothes up onto my pillows so she could sprawl out on her back on my new bed, her arms to either side of her body. “It’s no different than Bubbe, though. Not really. I’m guessing with age comes lots of opinions.”

“All of them. All of the opinions everywhere exist inside aging female bodies.”

“Something to look forward to, I guess,” she said. I couldn’t argue it.

We went quiet for a few minutes, Devi catching her breath, me putting my clothes away. Downstairs, Mom and Mormor were bickering, which meant everything was fine. I’d have been far more concerned if they weren’t fighting, to be honest, because it seemed to be their modus operandi.

“How are you doing?” Devi asked, her voice quieter and more serious than it had been a little while ago. “Like, with everything. You okay?”