My father latched onto the shade of mauve my mother wore on her lips, the very same lipstick favored by Wife Number Two: Bette, who pronounced her name Betty, not Bet; who had expensive taste and cheap style; who smoked Virginia Slims; who laughed louder than anyone in any room; who always ordered dessert and never inquired about the fate of her missing Victoria’s Secret catalogs. She, too, left mauve stains on cigarette butts and kept ashtrays full of ghosts in every corner of our house. She left marks. I wasn’t a fan of my father’s second wife, but she had her moments. She had gall. My mother had hardly been gone a year when Bette came into our house bearing strong opinions and officious advice: morality clauses and gruff instructions that still hold real estate in my head. I’d return home from school bent out of shape over a classmate with sadistic tendencies, or my father would walk through the door oozing vitriol, blaming the cogs at his job, and Bette would say, “Don’t give them the satisfaction of losing your cool. It’s better to kill ’em with kindness.” Her years as a Hart were brief, but her words are like eels in the coves of my mind. Kill ’em with kindness, they whisper. Make them sorry they ever began.

The garage door motor grinds twice: once to open, again to close. Silence fades into muffled laughter. A key in the lock. Chatter from all three cords in my knot of love and hate.

“You survived,” I shout from my chair.

Elizabeth heads straight to the den. “Not only that, we had fun. Luna is a trip.”

“See?” I grin. “She’s not bad. You just needed to give her a chance.”

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth counters. “She’s bad.”

“She’s the worst, Dad.”

Nick nods. “She’s kind of awful.”

“But we figured something out.” Elizabeth fixes herself a drink. “Nick did, anyway. Once you stop expecting her to be normal, she becomes wildly entertaining.”

“The key is to watch her like she’s a cartoon,” Nick explains. He helps himself to two cans of LaCroix from my fridge, tossing one to Jonah, cracking open the other for himself.

“How insincere,” I say.

Jonah throws himself over the arm of our couch. “I’d rather be insincere than intolerant.”

“Nice to see you prioritizing, Son.”

“Oh, relax,” says Elizabeth. “We had a nice time.” She nestles into her corner of the couch, and Nick returns to where he was sitting earlier, as though it is his place. Remembering something, Elizabeth asks, “Hey, is something wrong with the shower in the guesthouse? Nick said you thought it was broken.”

“False alarm,” I tell her.

“What did you think happened?” she asks.

“Nothing. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t backed up.”

She laughs. “Why would it be?”