“Drink?” she hears behind her. It’s Alice—her big dark eyes, her hair cut close, her perfect face. Kate likes her more than she likes Tess. Tess is controlling and judgmental. Mostly, though, she dislikes Tess because Kate’s mother loved her unreservedly.

“It’s delicious,” Tess says, as she comes up behind Alice.

They half hug one another. So thin, Kate thinks. When Tess met Kate’s brother two decades ago, she hugged no one; doesn’t know how, Helen used to say, before she decided that she liked her. All the warmth of which Tess is now capable, Kate feels sure, has come as a direct result of her relationship with Kate’s mom.

“Looks nice,” Tess says. She wears gray jeans and a black sweater, expensive looking.

“Thanks,” says Kate. She watches Tess lean closer to the ornaments. She must not eat, her mother used to say. Her collarbones jut up; the edges of her wrists. She keeps her hair pulled back tightly from her face; severe, her mom used to say. She doesn’t quite have the face to pull it off. Tess’s eyes are small, her lips too thin. She always seems to like Kate best when she first sees her, when neither of them has said or done much yet.

A couple of years ago Tess ran the New York marathon, and Kate tracked the little GPS dot on the phone app. Kate had been exhausted by it, watching—while she made dinner, cleaned out the last of the summer clothes in the kids’ closets—all that time not stopping (negative splits! Martin texted the family group text later), that little ceaseless dot.

“I brought dresses,” Kate says now, attempting to feel festive. She lets go of the angel with the chipped wing, has to work hard not to grimace as it clanks against another ornament. “And little bow ties for the boys. I thought we could get a Christmas picture.”

“Sure,” Tess says. She sets her drink down, not smiling. Alice looks out one of the windows toward the snow.

Martin dated lovely women before Tess. All Kate’s girlfriends had crushes on him. Some had maybe only come to Kate’s middle school birthday parties to get a glimpse of him; he was tall and handsome. Tess was nothing like the girls who came before. She was sharp and hard and quiet, not at all the sister Kate had hoped for when she imagined Martin getting married. It’s so much clearer to her now that none of them are what she hoped they would be. But Tess and Martin, Alice and Henry, whatever becomes of the children—they are all that she has left.

“You need help with the tree?” Tess says.