There were children, also. Every day, Alice got to be with children: a baby on her lap, pudgy, perfect wrists and thighs and small fists she got to hold in her hands; tiny, tentative voices asking her for the snacks she kept stored in her bag; there were bodies, warm and forming, needing, wanting, and though every one reminded her of those five bunches of cells that she’d had briefly but didn’t any longer, they also filled up some of all the gaping space that those five bursts of potential left behind.

There was Maddie: a joke on her phone about bananas. A texted fact about chinchillas, a video of just born peregrine falcons, a quiet conversation in her room about black holes.

Tess is the only sober grown-up. It’s a family thing, Tess thinks, the way they’re all pretending they’re not drunk. Josh is sober but he’s gone up to shower after his hard work outside. And besides, Josh is not grown-up.

The dining room is straight off the kitchen, separated from the living room by half a wall. Tess sits a minute in the quiet before the chaos, sends a couple work emails on her phone. The table’s long, salvaged wood that Henry’s sanded down, benches on either side and two large, old, cushioned wrought iron chairs at the ends.

Alice and Henry bring out the tacos, and the kids bound down from upstairs.

Tess calls Stell and Colin to sit close to her. She serves them both and is then embarrassed as Kate’s kids all serve themselves. They seem so competent and capable, even as Kate sneaks upstairs to check on Josh. It’s not like Tess doesn’t know she’s too controlling. From years of familial insecurity, said the therapist whom she fired not long after he said this. But also, being self-aware has never done much for her besides make her that much better at hating herself.

“You guys have fun?” Henry asks the children.

“Yeah,” says Colin, smiling at him.

“What’d you play?” Tess asks.

“Guns,” says Stella.

Tess stiffens.

“Sounds fun,” Henry says, making himself a fourth taco.

“What do you mean, ‘guns’?” says Tess.

“We shot each other,” Bea says.

“We all died,” says Jack.

Tess gets up to get a can of seltzer from the kitchen before she says something she’ll have to apologize for later. Her phone buzzes in her pocket; it’s Martin, who is in the other room, at the other end of the table next to Stella.

Only forty-six more hours.

“Josh?” Kate calls. Downstairs they’re all talking. She hopes that Tess is finally drunk. “There won’t be any food left,” she adds.