Henry looks at her, and Tess has to look past him. “You’re not bad,” he says.

“I still wish it wasn’t fucking Josh.”

They both laugh, and Henry hands her two of the drinks and leads her back out of the kitchen. “We’ll put Bea and the boys in charge of the snail kites.”

They go back into the dining room, and Tess and Henry pass out the drinks, and all the grown-ups thank them. The kids watch them. Quinn is meant to be a sober person, Alice has told Henry, and is not handed a glass.

Tess goes back in the kitchen and brings out the pie. Josh mans the whipped cream, sneaking spoonsful into the mouths of all the children, who laugh, talk with massive mounds of cream still in their mouths, spill on their dresses and their ties. Kate has not yet gotten her picture, but she laughs the loudest, watching them.

“My dress is dirty,” Bea says, sorry.

“It’s fine, duck,” Kate says, wetting her napkin. “It’s all completely fine.”

“Another toast?” says Martin.

“To Mom,” Kate says.

“To Mom,” her brothers agree, looking back at her.

“To Grandma,” Stella says, and raises her glass and clinks it against Colin’s. The kids all cheer, including Maddie. Quinn smiles, eyes still on her daughter, hands still in her lap.

“Let’s go out to the barn,” Alice says after dessert, bits of pie piled on plates and whipped cream spread across Kate’s cloth napkins, cranberry and gravy stains on the tablecloth that she brought back from Helen’s house, and Henry looks at Alice, and she smiles.

Later, as they go to bed, Henry will thank her. Later, they won’t have sex, but she will let him hold her for the first time in a long time, and it will feel good instead of awkward. She will let his arms wrap around her and won’t feel suffocated. His feet will brush against her ankles in the way that at other moments she has been annoyed by, that, at other moments still, she will ask him to avoid. But this night he will thank her for suggesting that they all go out to the barn after dinner to see his birds, and she will say it was a pleasure, exactly what they needed, and she will mean it, and he will be grateful to her, and for the whole night they’ll sleep close together, limbs and bodies overlapping, quiet.

“Of course,” Kate says, and puts the boys’ ties back on, wipes the whipped cream off Stella’s dress with a wet napkin. “Maybe we can get a picture too.”