“Too late. I offered the option earlier. They’re waiting for us, and Jack and Lisbeth are here.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” She looked at him with one eye open, the other squished against the plaid pillow sham.

He walked across the hardwood floors, kicked at the corner of a kilim rug that had folded over—fixing it, righting things as he always did.

“Take your time.” He walked into the hall and casually closed the door with his foot; it shut with a soft click into its frame. The doors in their historic home swelled and shrank without reason and never moved with the smooth slide just witnessed. Phil opened the bedroom door again, as if to praise its actions; he appreciated efficiency and never understood her love of old and inefficient houses.

“This is a very nicely built house,” he said before closing the door again.

“For a gerbil.” Amy swung her feet off the bed and bent over her knees before she walked to the bathroom, rubbing her eyes.

She washed her face in the soapstone sink, scrubbed it to pink with the washcloth laid in perfect hotel folds on the side of the counter. Embroidered on the cotton towel were the initials MSH; Amy took some perverse satisfaction in the fact that these were Eliza’s mother’s initials, not Eliza’s.

“Pull it together,” she told the woman in the mirror.

She stroked mascara on the lashes of her puffy eyes and dabbed concealer over the translucent blue skin; the improvement was miniscule. She smoothed her hair and wrapped a few tufts of fuzz around her finger, attempting to go for the “few loose curls” effect. It wasn’t working. She turned away from the mirror—it was time to face everyone else.

She walked into the kitchen and found her son, wet and laughing, with his arm coiled around Lisbeth’s waist. His hair dripped lake water on the front of her T-shirt, over her breasts. Even as they stood and laughed, it appeared that they were in a slow dance, slightly bending as if there was a gentle wind blowing just for them. Amy’s legs felt weak, unhinged at the joints.

She was jealous of them, how they held themselves in the middle of the kitchen regaling the others with their tale of the tipped sailboat. They didn’t even notice her. The awkward parents were the free-floating planets, the kids the sun.

Eliza turned to Amy. “You okay?”

Molly, Jack and Phil turned to Amy as she ignored Eliza and hugged Jack. “I saw you flip the sailboat. Smooth move, Romeo.”

He laughed and shook his hair on her. “It was all for your entertainment, Mom.”

Phil answered Eliza. “She’s fine. She just has allergies.”

Amy glared at Phil, then smiled at Eliza. “I’m totally fine.”

“Oh, poor thing,” Eliza said. “Carsick and allergic.”