Surrounded by all that sober wood, the dust thick and dancing in pockets of sunlight, Mum introduced herself, and I scowled and waved like some dumb teenager from central casting, and Henry Lake smiled. At least I think he did. Something moved under that beard anyway. I could hear him chewing, the regular, elastic squelch of his gum, the pulse in his forehead going like a metronome. He made a break-ice comment about the weather, and it was obvious he’d rehearsed it, for something to say, and that he had nothing else to follow it with, nothing prepared. It’s a terrible thing when some people make small talk—like seeing a wild animal in a sweater. Mum said something back, something optimistic about the quality of the light, and when that died a death, we just stood there in silence and it was pure tumbleweed—pure, undiluted awkward. I felt sick. My hangover was a stealth one. The kind that wakes you up fine, lulls you into a false sense of security, and then waits till you’re fully immersed in your day before it decides to pin you down and kick you in the teeth. I wanted to go to my room and get into bed, but neither of those things existed anymore, not in the same way, and that just made me want them even more.

Look at us in that Now. Mum and Henry Lake radiating strangeness and dashed hopes, trying to dredge up something to say to each other, and me with the sudden homesick cold sweats, malfunction-malfunction.

A bell rang upstairs somewhere, and Henry said, “Must go,” and I was like, Where? as he bowed to both of us, shallow and quick, like a butler, and went back up the stairs. I heard his door open and shut and Mum closed her eyes and breathed out.

“Well, that went well,” she said, and I said, “Yeah. I don’t know what I’ve been worrying about all this time,” and I went outside and sat on the doorstep, hoping someone from my old life would drive by and save me.

Across the road, an ambulance arrived, sirens off, no great hurry, and a nurse came out of the house opposite and stood on the doorstep in the swaying shade of a rose and ushered the paramedics in.

“Mrs. Midler,” Henry said from his place at the window above me, leaning, elbows on the sill. “She’s the last of them.”

I looked up. “Last of who?” I said.

The nurse shut the front door and Henry said, “The old guard. All new here now. All change,” and he was already moving back in, already pulling on the sash window with his stick-thin arms, the skin on them rippled and half-see-through like a forgotten balloon.