Evan usually chose the pillow bed. Even as he grew too big for anything we could make, he would sleep on the bound pillows, arms and legs hanging off the sides. He didn’t want to sleep with one of his sisters. Girls were yuck. Thankfully, I wasn’t recognized as being a girl. These memories flow now, freely and with the semblances of joy. Leaning over to kiss him goodnight, he would pull me to him with both arms and hug me tight. Still a little boy inside, but with the strong arms of a big boy. He needed me. And it was blissful. Even as the memory retreats to the other side of the line, the joy lingers. But it does not last. This night has ended in disaster.

Alice sleeps soundly in her pillow bed, even though I have untangled her arms from my waist and moved beyond her reach.

It is not far enough.

I let the feeling flow through me, still and silent, because Alice has left the hallway light on for Mick and now Dolly can see my face.

It is probably for the best. I don’t know what I might do if these feelings are set free.

We waited for Mick for a long time last night. We waited until we had watched all of her shows on the iPad and grown bored and tired.

“I want my Jell-O,” she’d said then.

I told her it was okay. She could bring us our Jell-O but she should leave the one for Mick, the lime Jell-O, in a place where he would see it. Maybe he would want dessert when he finally came home.

I can still see her face as she told me, “No!”

It was Coy Face, speaking with defiance.

Then she said, “I threw it away.”

“What? Why?’ I asked because it was all I could think to do. The hatred surged. Pulsated. Took over every inch of me and crawled over my skin, making me shudder.

“Because he didn’t come home so he doesn’t deserve Jell-O,” she said.

“Alice—that’s not nice!” I was so close to reaching through those bars and shaking her, violently. “Go and get it right now—out of the garbage and bring it to me!”

It was a ridiculous request. The Jell-O would be scattered among the remnants of the chicken and coffee grinds from the morning and who knew what else. Still, I needed it. I needed her to bring it to me.

But then she said, “It’s not in there. I can’t even stand the smell of it.”

“What did you do with it?” I asked, my mouth bone dry.

Coy Face answered, and my only plan for escape disappeared before my eyes.

“I put it down the drain.”

* * *