She left me alone without comment, probably thinking I was a member of the household and not a fellow paid employee, but I wished she would stay despite the tears and my inability to move. The ginger ale was the best liquid I’d ever swallowed. I wished I could thank her.

By evening, I’d managed a shower and a scrambled egg with some crackers. I tried to remember how I’d felt after James’s and my first encounter, when he’d come on my stomach. I tried to summon the unaffected person I’d been the next morning but something had changed. I was still coming to. Still underwater. The various pieces of the previous night were arranging themselves, some of them still missing. I could smell Lonnie on my body, her cologne, her cunt, her sweat, as if our bodies had really merged into one, but instead of satisfaction there was a deep embarrassment in the pit of my stomach. I could see her blank face from the night before, I could picture myself slapping her. I couldn’t remember quite how it all had ended.

I put on an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I guess I knew they’d be coming back, that I’d have to face them all again. I had no idea what any of us would say. I thought if Carlow was with them it would be a protection, that we’d just never speak of it again, the way James had never mentioned our first kiss. Robert would’ve gone back to the city, I remembered with relief, he was staying only through the weekend.

When I heard voices in the foyer I ventured out to find them, my heart pounding. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.

I REMEMBER THERE BEING A FIRE IN THE FIREPLACE, BUT THERE wasn’t—there wouldn’t have been in September, I’m clearly conflating memories from upstate, but I can hear it crackling behind me, feel the flush of it on my back. The room was hot. Maybe there was a record crackling, the needle all the way at the middle, circling around and around playing only little pops and static.

Lonnie was curled up in the corner of the pink sofa, her feet stuck between two cushions. She looked tiny and years younger, more like a child of ten or eleven. Her arms were folded around her legs and she kept putting her cheek down on her knee, so I could see only the top of her head, the white line that parted her hair.

“We expected you to be gone, honestly,” James said.