After three days of that, Helen finally slept. “I’m tired, honies,” she said late one afternoon, before they’d even begun talking about dinner. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

Henry had weed, and Martin went to get a pizza at the place they all liked that was much better pizza than there should have been in their small Florida town—some guy who’d moved down from New Jersey. It was better pizza, even, Tess said later, than most of what they had in New York. Henry rolled a joint, and they all sat outside, and Kate found three old cans of Heineken in the extra fridge their mom kept in the garden shed. It was the beginning of the spring semester, February, but it was warm outside, and they were barefoot. Henry lit the joint, and they all smoked it. They ate their pizza folded, no plates; Martin found some paper towels. The sky was clear, and they all looked up and talked for hours about nothing. Kate got too stoned and laughed too much, and her brothers laughed at her. Martin had taken the year off from his PhD to save money and teach high school while Tess finished her clerkship. The way he talked about the kids: one of the things Kate holds against Tess when she feels like holding things against Tess is how much she thinks Martin would have preferred teaching high school. But the PhD was so much more prestigious, so much more well suited to Martin’s incredible intelligence, Tess would say a few months later. My dad taught high school and he was smart as fuck, Kate wanted to say but did not. Henry was building his yurt in Maine. He knew Alice already, but she’d not yet moved in with him.

After, as they all went upstairs to their respective rooms, Kate checked in on Helen. She watched her a long time, asleep, alone under the covers. Then she listened for her brothers: Martin talking on the phone to Tess in a whisper, Henry passed out on top of the covers of his childhood bed. Kate felt better; she felt less shocked and scared after that.

She would still be sad and lonely for a long time. She’d take a semester off from college, move back in briefly with Helen. But that night with Martin and Henry had shifted something. It had not made any of the concrete facts of what they’d lost any better, but it let Kate know that there’d be more life after: stupid stories, long, late nights sitting outside laughing with her brothers, conversations about nothing in Helen’s backyard.