They sat at the table and ate breakfast, talking about the best ways to convince their parents. Ayanna felt nostalgia simmering inside her. As they ate and schemed, she could feel every breakfast they’d had like this together. The way their brains could sync up, how without saying it aloud, they could both communicate they loved each other not just as family, but as friends. Ayanna felt certain they would be doing this their entire lives, coming together for a meal one of them cooked and laughing their way through it. She was seventeen and felt certain in the way that only the very young or very rich can, that she could see the rest of her life spread out in front of her. All the times they would spend together until they were both ninety-four were there.

Olivia would sow the seeds by texting their mom and saying she wanted to talk about something important. Then, on the phone, she would tell their mom she was worried about college and how it would make it even harder to stay connected with Ayanna. Meanwhile, Ayanna would go home and talk to their dad face-to-face because he was hard as fuck over texts and baby soft face-to-face. She would say the truth.

Neither expected both parents would respond: “We should probably talk as a family about this.”

That night they gathered for dinner at Ayanna’s home. She knew there was a brief period of time when all four of them had lived here together, but could remember only the ways her parents spoke about that time rather than her own experiences of it.

“I still hate this rug,” her mother said within two minutes of being there.

There was nothing noteworthy Ayanna could see about the rug. There was a small stain on it from when she had spilled some hot chocolate on it six years ago.

“Is this the same plant?” she asked while standing in the kitchen, rubbing her right fingers with her left hand. Ayanna’s father nodded.

Her face was in flux between narrowed eyes and an occasional half smile. Nothing and everything seemed to please their mother as she continued looking around.

Ayanna and Olivia worked together on an elaborate salad to pretend they were not watching their parents. They peered at a cookbook and made a vinaigrette that turned out very poorly because neither was paying attention to the right amount of oil and lemon and seasoning to put in. It wasn’t that they hadn’t ever seen their parents together—they had been at soccer games and school plays and award ceremonies, often sitting together and chatting with a brusque intimacy that reminded their daughters they had known each other for more than half their lives at this point—but they hadn’t been together in this house since the divorce.