She knows she’ll hurt Josh, make him feel shame, if she tells her brothers about his botched investments, but she’s never wanted a thing in life quite the way she wants to raise her children in the house where her mother raised her. He’s not, so far, offered any other options, and she’s pretty sure she’ll let her husband feel some shame if it might help her get this thing she wants so much.

Alice has laid out old rugs, bright reds and blues, in stretches of the hallway. The floor beneath is dark wood and creaks. The rugs are vacuumed, but not the corners or the baseboards, crumbs stick to Kate’s wool socks as she walks through the upstairs rooms. The mess is comfort as much as it’s a bother, proof that there are things that she does better than them.

In the room Tess and Martin are sharing with their own kids, Kate runs her hands over Tess’s still-closed bag. Her fingers linger on the zipper. She picks up Stella’s stuffed platypus and breathes in the scent of kid.

She stands a long time at the entrance to Alice and Henry’s bedroom. Their bed is made. The door was open. She thinks of what excuse she might give, were one of them to find her thumbing through their dresser drawers.

“Spying?”

Kate startles, gasps, then laughs. “I wanted to make sure I had a place to hide in case your wife attacked.”

Martin grins and holds her shoulder. “You know she’s mostly harmless.”

“They’re kids,” she says. “They’re just being kids.”

She knows Tess is downstairs, angry, that she sent Martin up here to check in—Martin, the same guy who got kicked off the soccer team his senior year for fighting after his teammate cornered freshman Kate and called her chubby.

“She’s anxious,” he says.

She walks from the entrance to Henry’s room and leans against the door to one of the hall closets. “Not the word I’d use.”

Tess doesn’t like Kate’s children because they remind Tess too much of all the ways her kids are also flawed. Tess doted on Kate’s kids when Helen was still living, but now she refuses to leave them alone with her kids for too long.

Kate’s Jack has ADHD, and so does Colin. Kate has not taken Jack to doctors but she assumes. Tess is a lawyer; they have a full-time nanny; she’s taken Colin to doctors—the best doctors—and had it confirmed. Neither can sit still, and they’re impulsive. When Jack was small he bit everyone who upset him at preschool. Late at night sometimes, in bed, her phone underneath the covers, Kate googles how she might better help him. She likes the websites best that say that this will pass.

“Should we give them all a bath?” asks Martin.