Kate watches Josh out the window with his igloo again, the light behind him from the barn. In the barn, with Henry, the little that she’d glimpsed beneath the sheets had been both beautiful and strange, what looked like tiny clay painted birds stretching across the ceiling. Even as Tess rushed in, as she grabbed hold of Colin, pulled him off the scaffolding to hug him, as Kate watched him flinch and Tess stepped back, embarrassed, was clearly close to tears, Kate worked to catch glimpses of them: the birds looked more real than they should have, the textures of their feathers alive and delicate somehow.

“Big plans for today?”

Kate jumps and turns to see her middle brother. “I thought you’d work all day.”

Henry nods toward Alice, who stands separate from them, on her second cup of coffee. “I am under strict instructions to be bonding during waking hours.”

“Lucky us,” Kate says. She sidles closer to the stove so Henry can wash the paint from his hands in the sink. They both watch the pancakes bubble on the griddle.

“You really want to go to Florida?” he says.

“It’s where we’re from,” says Kate. “Mom loved it there.”

“We hated it,” he says. He turns and gets a stack of plates for her.

She flips the pancakes, piles up two stacks on the plates that Henry’s holding. “You hated it.”

He brings the food to her boys and kisses the top of each of their heads.

“Thank you, Uncle Henry,” Kate says.

“Thank you, Uncle Henry,” both boys say.

“It’s so . . . Republican,” he says.

“It’s conservative,” she argues, pouring both boys a glass of water. “But Mom’s friends aren’t. She wasn’t.”

“You’re going to hang out with Mom’s friends?”

“We’d find other friends,” she says.

He takes the pan from her and wipes it clean, starts in on the mixing bowl and Bea’s and Stella’s plates.

“Besides, since when do you have friends?” she adds.

They both watch as the boys dig into their pancakes, as Jack dips two fingers into the pool of syrup and licks and dips again.

“You want to raise them there, though?” Henry says.

“Our childhood was good.”

“But we left.”

“When I was twenty-two I needed to prove I could leave, but who actually cares? I made things harder on purpose, leaving—without Mom, learning the Richmond weather and Richmond schools, that place and those people’s expectations—it feels insane. So dumb.”

“I’m out of syrup,” Jamie says.

“How do you ask?” Kate says, though Henry’s already pouring. “I wish we’d gone back years ago,” she says.

Outside, the light is perfect. They’ve passed to the other side of early morning, and in the flat expanse of yard between the back of the house and the barn the sun’s light skates and slides across the snow.