Wendy looked down at her hands. They were her thinnest feature. “Thank you.” She looked up. “I like your earrings.” Manfred wore tiny, classic pearl studs.

“Back in a few with coffee,” Manfred promised.

Wendy watched the door close and reached for her phone. At her most lonely and vulnerable moments she texted Roy or Shy, presumably to help organize them in some way, but really just to garner a response. Should she confront Shy about the meeting she’d had with her teachers? She’d come off a bit more demanding and terse and scary than she’d meant to. But what about that smug, unclean, burrito-eating, overly tattooed Latin teacher? All she wanted was for Shy to succeed. Not as a student per se, but as a person. She began a long, urgent, motherly text.

I know you hate it when I meddle, and I know you like Latin, but you’re simply not putting the time into your other classes. The headmistress said something about peer tutors, which I think sounds like a cop-out. We can find you a proper tutor. It’s ok to ask for help when you need it.

She read over the text and then deleted it. Shy did hate it when she meddled. Her most meddlesome had been her excitement about the move itself, which Shy had found simply annoying. “What color do you want your new room to be?” Wendy would ask. “I honestly don’t care, Mum,” Shy would answer. “Should we give away all our old clothes and just get new ones when we get there?” Wendy would ask gleefully. “Why would we do that?” Shy said. “Should we put in one of those taps by the stove in our new kitchen so we can fill up pots for pasta?” Shy didn’t even bother responding to that. Should she text Roy? Maybe Shy was in the wrong school. But Roy might be writing. Wendy didn’t want to disturb him.

She turned back to her computer and dragged the cursor away from the perfume article and into the search engine. Maybe if she found them a country house they could spend time together as a family on weekends, go apple picking or antiquing. Roy could write in a restored barn overlooking a babbling brook. Shy could have a horse. She clicked on a map of the Hudson Valley. Millbrook, Rhinebeck, Milan, Hudson. There were real estate offices in every town, with websites. Oh, here was a pretty house, in someplace called Ancram—with a pool!

“Hello? Dad?” Shy called as she closed and locked the front door to their four-story brownstone. The parlor floor consisted of a giant great room with French doors that led to a terrace overlooking the garden. The house had been built in the early nineteen hundreds and had been modernized and remodeled many times, but it maintained its old New York charm. Upstairs were four enormous bedrooms. Downstairs was an entire apartment.