“I’ll have your dad FedEx it on Monday,” her mother said. “Maybe I’ll go watch the Food Channel. They have this man who builds cakes that look just like people. Your dad wanted to get one of me for my birthday.”

“All right,” Josie said. “Talk to you soon.”

“’Bye, darling.”

Josie closed her phone, smiled, and shook her head. Her mother and her Aunt Steffi were constantly picking up what they thought were hysterical gifts for both Josie and Natalie. Before they went to camp they were both given motorized marshmallow turners; when they graduated from college it was an alarm clock that spun off the bedside table when the snooze button was pushed. Natalie and Josie would roll their eyes, and Natalie always pawned hers off on a friend, but Josie had kept them all. Even now, when she visited her parents, she would often come across some gift at the back of her closet—an egg-laying-chicken key chain, a singing Santa pen—and not be able, still, to discard it. She was just like her father who wore the holey sweater her mother had knitted for him while they were dating. But her mother was entirely unsentimental—gifts were received, used, and then given to charity. She kept nothing except a small lock of Matthew’s baby hair from his first haircut. Josie had found it—a lone blond curl unceremoniously tucked in an old envelope—when she was fifteen and rifling through her mother’s bedside table looking for stray cigarettes. Her brother had had unusually thick hair for a ten month old—curls that spiraled down his neck and hung in his eyes. “He looks like a girl,” Josie had said. “She’s right, Carol,” her father agreed, “it’s got to be cut.” Her mother had resisted but finally given in, and all four of them had traipsed down to the salon. Her father had sat Matthew on his lap and they had all held their breath while the barber steadied the scissors. “He’s going to scream,” four-year-old Josie had said. “He’ll move, John,” her mother said; “he’ll be cut.” But Matthew had done neither. To everyone’s surprise, he had laughed—hiccupy giggles every time the barber snipped. And then they were all laughing, the curls spiraling to the ground, Josie scooping up the fallen locks from the floor and bringing her mother a pillow of silky ringlets to choose from.

Josie realized she had stopped walking. She was suddenly very tired, and she wondered if she might be able to get another hour of sleep before Mary needed her. She walked quickly home, but when she arrived and opened the door, she could hear Tyler screaming. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and went upstairs.

Tyler was sitting on the floor, fully dressed.

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

“They’re biting me,” he howled.

“What is biting you?”

“The shoes!”