The place feels cold this early in the morning; Quinn’s sad all of a sudden that she let Maddie talk her out of a Christmas tree. Maddie refused a tree because of the climate. Quinn isn’t sure this makes sense, but also, she doesn’t question Maddie when it comes to facts about the world. She’s obsessed, maybe, Maddie, with the climate. She asks about sea levels rising at least once a week; she asks about hurricanes, fires, and floods. Quinn is often scared by what her daughter says, and by her own lack of answers. Quinn used to google Maddie’s questions about climate just as she did all the other questions Maddie asked for which she had no answers. But when she googled the climate, everything either horrified her or made no sense. Now she just nods when Maddie talks about it and agrees with her. When Maddie asks questions, Quinn tells her to look it up and hands her her phone. She thinks now she should have overridden her, put some block on the phone’s Wi-Fi. She should have gotten a fake tree. But Maddie said the footprint of all that fake shit, all that waste, wasn’t worth the ritual (though Maddie didn’t say “fake shit”). It’s the ritual, though, that Quinn wishes she could give her now.

There are presents, at least. They’ve not played at the pretense of Santa since Maddie was four. They’ll watch the same movie that they always watch on Christmas, Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Home for the Holidays, a movie that was made the year that Quinn was born. It’s too grown-up for Maddie, maybe, but then Maddie’s always felt more grown up to Quinn than Quinn herself.

She gets a stool and gets the presents down, gets the wrapping paper, scissors, tape. She sits cross-legged on her bed, quiet. Maddie’s fourth Christmas was the Christmas that they spent apart: her social worker—Alice, call me Alice, please, Quinn, her perfect, pretty face too close to hers, always acting like they should pretend that they were friends—came the week before and picked up Maddie’s gifts. She had supplemented them, Quinn found out later, when Maddie wrote Quinn a card to thank her for the gifts and mentioned books, a pair of shoes Quinn hadn’t bought. This year, she wraps a model rocket ship and a pair of shoes with planets on them that were too expensive and which Maddie will grow out of by March. She has a book on birds, a book on space, a book about four sisters recommended for her online called The Penderwicks. She is terrible at wrapping, and the corners are all crooked and she keeps one eye angled toward the door so Maddie doesn’t catch her, keeps quiet so she can hear when Maddie starts to stir.