Gabriella’s home is airy, with mote-filled daylight filtering through the small window near her blue kitchen cabinets. The living room extends from the kitchen, an open-plan arrangement. The walls are sparse, save for a pair of kitschy thrift-shop landscape drawings. Her lampshades are stained glass, each fixture placed in the center of an ample wooden end table, on either side of a black couch—spotless, its cushions fluffed, a quilt folded gently across one arm. There are no family photos, nothing to indicate that anyone lives here at all, really.

Lola sits on the floor, her hair styled in spiraled box braids and pulled back into a bun. She gazes at me questioningly and waves before turning back to her picture book.

Around Lola, the space is clean, immaculately so, the hardwood floor scrubbed to a shine. I smell Pine-Sol, as if this room has been sanitized just for me.

Anneliese comes bustling back in, her hands cupping large glasses of iced tea, which she places on coasters before settling onto the sofa. “Come sit. Don’t mind Lola. She’ll be busy looking at that book for another twenty minutes. I don’t let them have technology during the day, you know. But the second my sister comes home, they’re all over her for the iPad, playing their games and whatnot. Jordan’s in a time-out right now. He tried to steal my phone. I’ll take them to the park soon.” She stirs her iced tea slowly, sugar crystals dissolving toward the bottom.

I pick up my own glass and sit, finally, careful to square up my legs with the cushion. I wouldn’t want to dent the couch too much and ruin the symmetry of the room.

“Anyway, thanks for coming over here this time.” Her hair, that ethereal mermaid hair, is tied back, twisted into a bun like Lola’s.

“It’s not a problem at all. Your home is beautiful.” I take a sip of the iced tea and involuntarily shiver, the ice running through my veins, down to my toes.

She snorts lightly. “My sister is an aesthetician. She works in one of those fancy plastic surgery offices on the Upper East Side. Everything, even at home, has to be sterile, immaculate, no hair out of place. I told her that she can’t expect the kids to listen to those rules.” She clucks disapprovingly.

“You must be used to other parents’ idiosyncrasies by now, though,” I say, stirring the tea with a long-handled spoon.