My body is centered in the doorframe: heels in the hallway, toes in my craft room. The moon is waning but bright. Jars of glitter twinkle in its light. This had been Nick’s room. When he went to college I indulged a stupid fantasy, believing that if I built a sanctuary for my creativity, I might actually finish the projects suggested in Martha Stewart magazine and Redbook and Domino, and then maybe I’d stumble upon a skill worth developing into a hobby. Then I’d have a hobby. In other words, then I’d have a reliable distraction from the ache, and it would live down the hall, just as Nick did when he distracted me, so gently, from my feral grief. The Ultimate Ache.

Nick said, Go for it. He swore he didn’t mind, so I swapped out his bed for a Singer, never dreaming he’d think, There’s no place for me now. Never dreaming he’d keep that thought to himself, or that maybe, to him, I was just a lady—another person in charge, expecting blind trust—and not a home, which is what Nick was to me.

Did he sense how terribly I’d treated his father? Did he always resent me, and I just never noticed? Maybe I’m an idiot for hoping he’d been too young to remember my cattiness, that he only knew me as an ally. After Becca got sick, I started visiting more often. Marco and I joined forces out of necessity, and I got to know him, then love him, and then I was so ashamed. Eventually, I rented out my house and moved in with them to help while Marco was at work. After Becca died, Marco thanked me for being his friend, which was horrible. I’d been so unkind to him and had called him Rasputin behind his back, and in the end he was a wonderful man who loved my sister more than life itself. So then he was gone, too.