My sister Marigold sits beside me with her sketch pad open, working a charcoal pencil against the thick paper. Her fingers are black from smudging, and a charcoal mark wisps across her cheek.

“What are you doing?” I grumble.

“Drawing.”

“Why?”

“The Shadow Man has bad dreams,” she says, matter-of-factly, like reading a thought bubble over one of her comics. “I wanted to capture it.”

I groan. “Let me see.”

She twists the sketchbook, revealing a hard-lined, gray and black version of me. Not a bad likeness except for the pinched and wrinkled brow and my wiry fingers tucked in at my chin.

“Damn, Marigold. I’m thirty-six. Not eighty.” I sit up, rubbing my head.

“It’s an accurate depiction,” she says, returning to her work.

With a breath, I scan the room for clothes, finding an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt draped on the bed’s end. Resurrected from some box of my left-behinds and freshly laundered. Mom’s in full force today. I even smell bacon frying.

She gets like this when something’s happened.

“It’s inconsiderate to draw people while they’re sleeping. Remember?”

Now, her brow pinches as she considers the question. “Yes, but I thought you meant other people.”

“Other people?”

“Mom. Dad. Gil. Overnight guests. Children I babysit.” As she delivers her list, she grows frustrated, probably because she misunderstood my meaning. Marigold’s biggest personal hang-up is anxiety over getting things wrong. Facial expressions. Social cues. The rules. I often tell her that no one is better at being genuine than she is, and the only thing wrong would be not being herself.

Well, except when it comes across as creepy. She’s scared the hell out of everyone in the house at one time or another over her sleep drawings. Once, she penned Gil in the dark, sending him into a full-blown panic attack when he startled awake and saw her hovering over him, scratching away.

“Thanks for not lumping me in with other people,” I smirk, refraining from giving her a consoling pat on her leg. She doesn’t like touching. “You’re right. I’ll be the one exception.”

She continues her sketch. I check my watch. “It’s 11:30? Fuck.”

“Mom says not to cuss.”

“She means other people.”

I stretch, getting out of bed, my joints cracking enough to make me groan again. I roll my shoulders, sore from the accident and the weight of yesterday resettling against them.

“Mom said you needed to sleep,” Marigold mentions, failing to connect that remark with her need to draw me. “She said someone almost died.”

“Did you bring the dogs over?” I ask, redirecting.

She nods, not looking up. “They are fed, watered, and walked.”

“Thanks. What would I do without you?”

“Hire a professional dog sitter,” she answers dryly.

“What’s everyone up to today? Give me the 4-1-1.”

“No one says that anymore,” she says.