Mostly it’s a matter of the residents themselves. Cynthia, Reid’s mom—a petite, smiling woman with a head full of dark curls who retired from her job as a high school teacher only last year—has the kind of time-aware, resources-aware efficiency of a woman who has raised seven children in a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom house. In her kitchen, every move she makes seems calculated to get the most from the space; at her dining table, every turn in conversation she directs seems calculated for balance, for making sure no one dominates. Maybe it ought to seem disconcerting, too mechanical, but somehow it doesn’t. It only seems as though you’ve been put in the hands of someone capable and kind, someone who wants to make the most of her time with you.

Thomas Sutherland—a man who looks so like an older version of Reid that I’d stammered in shock at his initial, sternly put “Good afternoon” to me—is more literally a numbers guy, an accountant who works out of a tidy home office at the front of the house. He’s quiet, observant, blunt when he speaks, and within three minutes of learning about my work he asked me whether I was careful about the deductions I took for my supplies. My lips had quirked in a smile, my eyes catching Reid’s across the table, and for a second I think we’d both forgotten about numbers, remembering instead letters he once wrote to me: I was nervous.

Finally, there’s Reid’s sister, Cady. Twenty years old with long hair in mermaid shades of pink, blue, and purple, a dye job that would cost hundreds of dollars at even the cheapest salons in New York, and only six months to go in the cosmetology program she’s in. Cady—bright and talkative and obviously something of a mystery to her more reserved parents and brother—counts herself in years of distance from her older siblings, none of whom are here for our spontaneous visit. Eight years younger than the youngest, Seth; ten years from Ryan; eleven years from Reid; thirteen from Owen; sixteen from the twins, Connor and Garrett. These numbers, it’s clear, matter to her, some way that she defines herself in relation to siblings who are so much older than her, and even though I don’t have any experience with that kind of count, I get the sense that in her adolescent years, Cady probably felt very much like an only child.

To that, I can definitely relate.