Alice does not plan to but she turns left instead of right, down toward Quinn and Maddie’s condo complex instead of back up toward her and Henry’s house. She parks where she always parks, just out of view of their basement windows, pulls long on her cigarette. She can’t see them; Quinn mostly keeps the curtains closed, but Alice still comes sometimes to sit, to look for them. Alice is Maddie’s social worker. Quinn lost custody for six months after an accidental overdose, and it’s Alice’s job to check on them. She comes here more than to the other families she checks in with. Henry works out in the barn most of every day, and sometimes Alice drives around for hours; she parks out here, tries to get a glimpse of Maddie, as if her vigilance can keep her safe.

Quinn had work today, Alice knows, but Maddie had no school, and she thought maybe they might be here. But all the lights are off.

“Don’t think I don’t know what she thought,” says Alice’s mother, still talking about Helen.

Alice can no longer stomach her mother’s truculence. “How’s Dad, Mom?” she says.

“He’s Dad.”

“Is he home? Can I talk to him?”

“He’s at work.”

An older woman pulls into the spot next to Alice; Alice smiles at her and pulls out. She turns the car back up the long hill to the house. “Henry needs to be with his siblings this year,” she says to her mother.

“Your whole life is built around what Henry needs.”

“Please don’t explain my life to me.”

“I’m trying to make sure you get to live it.”

“You mean like you did?” This is an old fight, too worn out to hit too sharply—shorthand for all the ways that neither woman would have chosen what the other has, for all the ways that neither of them is what the other might have wished she were.

“We’ll see you on the twenty-eighth, then?”

“Henry has to work, but I’ll be there.”

“Did your husband get a job?”

“Henry’s working on his work.”

“So, then, he’s available to come see us for a few days, because he does not get paid for what he does?”

“Can we please not do this?”

“I just think it’s ridiculous that he’s going to miss my New Year’s party because he’s building trinkets in the backyard barn that my dead mother made available to him.”

“He’s an artist, Mother.”

“You’re an artist, Alice. What has Henry ever done with his art?” Her mother says the word “art” like it’s alleged.

“I’m not an artist anymore.”

“Of course. A social worker.”

“I have to go, Mom.”

“The twenty-eighth, then, both of you. I’ll send Dad to pick you up.”

Alice feels too tired. “Merry Christmas, Mom.”

“Of course.”