“If coal is clean, then I’m skinny.”

“If you’re skinny, then I must not even exist.”

“If you don’t exist, then I must be an only child.”

“And if you’re an only child,” I add, “then you will have to build this crib on your own.”

“Oh, but it’s much more fun to order you around. No, not that one, that one,” she says, pointing at the pieces. Like the wind suddenly leaving, deflating her, she sighs. “I expected Don would be the one to do this.”

The happy mood deflates, too, although I am not yet ready to relinquish it. But she will not allow me to continue smiling and joking while she mourns, so I must turn my features frowningly at the floor, sorry for her, but sorry also for the turn to solemner things, when I was so enjoying myself, enjoying being with my sister and not worrying about dark things.

“Is he handy?”

“Not especially,” she says. “Maybe it’s better this way. Could you imagine him dealing with all these little pieces, the way he gets so irritated?”

I remember, yes, the kind of permanently frustrated energy he seemed to carry with him, as if things were never happening quickly enough or quite to his expectations.

“He’s been much better about that lately,” she continues, paging idly through the instructions. “Or, had been. At the start of the pregnancy, he downright doted on me.” A sad smile has overtaken her face, and she is no longer looking at the instructions or me or the room but somewhere else. For a moment, I worry there will be tears, but she manages to keep them in check. “I don’t know what happened.”

She seems fragile despite her size—like she is made of glass, a Christmas bauble. And she is beautiful in her immensity.

I can imagine what happened: the reality of the child became a looming presence, impossible to ignore the larger she grew; suddenly it was no longer just Elizabeth but Elizabeth and a baby, and all the hormones and frustration and responsibility that came with it. And she wouldn’t have wanted to hear his fears, I think, because she had fears of her own, so he bottled them inside bottles, maybe, until they burst. And this is all just speculation, of course—I might be completely wrong—but I imagine living with that kind of tension, and it makes me sorry for the terrible anxiety that must exist on the receiving end of it.

“Good riddance,” I tell her. “Sounds like he hurt you.” Even though it is a statement, it is rather more a question.

“So? Everyone hurts each other,” she replies.

“Will you divorce him?”

She stares at me. “How can you ask me that?”

“Well, will you?”

She snaps, “I don’t know.”

“I think you should.”

“What an awful thing to say.”

I sigh. “Don’t let him serve you with papers, if that’s what he’s going to do. You should serve him.” I give her a wry smile. “It would serve him right.”