“I can’t wait to take you guys fishing,” Trevor said. “In the summer, when I was a kid, I’d wake up early to fish and I’d grill bluegill for breakfast.”

“Eww, Dad,” Emily said. “I am not eating a fish.”

“But you do eat fish,” he said, his tone cheerful. “We literally ate fish a few nights ago.”

“That’s different,” she said. “Wait, did you eat the eyeballs?”

With the sun warming the car, making me sleepy, I tuned out Emily’s questions and Trevor’s delightful answers.

Trevor was the high-voltage electric core of our family, the plasma ball with its brilliant neon light filaments, enchanting the kids, drawing them near, and rewarding their proximity with a pulsating, dancing light display.

He turned off Route 34 onto a hilly side road. I put my hand against my door and glanced back. Emily was wide-eyed and smiling out her window, still chatting about fish.

Sawyer didn’t look up. Probably sleeping. Poor Sawyer. He was not looking forward to high school here. He was supposed to be staying in Chicago with his birth mom, but plans had changed abruptly three days ago. He loved time with his dad and didn’t mind Emily and me, but still, as Sawyer had put it, “This was going to suck balls.”

This was also going to be an interesting experiment. The four of us had never lived together full-time. We usually got Sawyer on Wednesdays and every other weekend. The three of us were used to Sawyer moving in and out of our space like a ghost. Sometimes he was rattling chains and putting us on edge and sometimes he slipped our minds because he mostly wasn’t there and, when he was, he never left a mess. The kid was a minimalist. He didn’t have enough clothes to fill a dresser. Didn’t want them. All he needed was a toothbrush, deodorant, a pair of shoes, his phone, earbuds, and a charger.

“It’s hilly,” Emily said. “That’s so cool, Dad.” I hadn’t remembered hills. Maybe this pocket of Hunther was anomalous. Were we anywhere near my childhood home? I couldn’t recall the street name. It didn’t matter. I had no plans to visit that house.

“Yeah, Em,” Trevor said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “We’re not far from Chicago, but it feels far away.”

“Like a different planet,” I said, my sarcasm thick.

Trevor laughed. He liked my grumpy humor.

“Here we are, guys. This is our street,” he said.

I read the street sign aloud. “Winding Way.”