It’s early evening, and shadows crawl over the carpet. I don’t know when that happened—the sun leaving. It was here, just a minute ago. Whatever. I live here now. On this carpet.

There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door. Someone is always knocking on the fucking door. No one can take a hint. I make sure the rest of my pills are in the envelope inside the throw pillow, not on the desk. Then I turn on the bedside lamp.

“Come in,” I say.

Aunt Nora is barefoot but still wearing her lawyer pantsuit. She looks a lot like Mom—dark hair, olive skin, mysterious smile. Uncle Tony’s behind her. He’s in his usual uniform of Red Sox shirt and jeans.

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony says. “You doing okay?”

“I’m tired, I guess.”

I wish Dad had left behind more Vicodin. I wish Priscilla delivered. It’s hard to sneak out to the boardwalk. Maybe there’s an app for that.

“Got time for a little chat?” Nora asks. I nod, and she perches on the edge of my bed.

Mae comes in. Plops down on the floor, leaning back on her hands. As usual, something has been decided without me. I don’t know what.

“Do you want me to lead up to what I have to say, or should I just say it?” Nora asks.

I like how blunt she is. Nora always cuts to the chase.

“Say it,” I say.

“Tony and I”—she looks at Tony, who nods—“want you to move in with us.”

“But you live in Boston.” I look over at Mae, panicked. She’s watching me with her thinking face on: brows furrowed, eyes a little glazed, biting her lip.

“They told you already,” I say to her.

“You were sleeping.”

The heir and the spare. Of course they told her first.

“There’s a really good high school by us—Saint Francis,” Nora is saying. “Nate’s in the dorms at MIT, but he comes home most weekends. We’ve got plenty of space in the house—you’d have your own rooms.”

“I can’t … I … Micah lives here,” I say.

Nora nods. “I know, sweetie.”

I close my eyes, see him and Dad painting the house sky blue. Days and days of them covered in paint, then trooping in like conquering heroes, Dad’s arm slung around his shoulder.

I see Micah climb through my window at night and act out all the waves he caught that day, me trying not to laugh too hard so Mom and Dad would hear.

I see the look of pure bliss on his face when he overhears Mom refer to him as “my son, Micah.” He turned to me and whispered, “We can still get married, right?”