Soon after, she made Haiku and the marina our permanent home. It was true that her clients were leaving. The apartment was too expensive, even though after Misha, many had stopped bothering to pay or collect rent, at least in our downtown neighborhood. My mother said it was immoral to squat, never mind dangerous. Each time the power went out or the ground floor flooded, the climb to the twelfth floor got harder. The stairwells were no place to venture into alone. Living on Haiku, when riots broke out or home invasions threatened, we could cast off to the safety of open water, with only the weather to worry about. A boat made “sticking it out” possible, my mother declared. We non-quitters were “going the long haul,” until the climate fix took hold and life returned to normal.

Normal. Like anything could be, with the weather like it was. Or, fix. Like it could happen tomorrow or the next day, a magical spell. The maddest sort of delusion. So, why didn’t I question it at the time? I was old enough to know better. So were most of the stay-behind kids. But by our definition, what unhinged our parents could have no bearing on our lives. We were the children of the Wave, one wave or another, too busy being cool survivors. I’d be out late roaming the half-empty streets with my stay-behind friends or grinding down on my online high-school courses—a sure way not to face reality. Or later, queueing up for erratic grocery deliveries at the market, and eventually, at the local food pantries. It was like Jenn not wanting to leave Unca Joe unless for the Mainland. A sort of madness. The next time someone called me stubborn, I’d say it was genetic, on the female line.

We should have gone with him when we had the chance.

The more the memories surged through me, the less I understood Rubio’s nostalgia for pre-Abel New York. But he’d been old enough during the hiatus to make the best of it, to live something close to a normal urban life. I was in my early teens when Felix came down on us.

I kicked my heels against the doors of Melville’s storage locker and bounced to my feet. I could see how, when you had a past, you could waste a whole lot of time stuck in it, chewing it over and over like stale bread. What was the point, when there was squat you could do to change it?