“Well, take them off then.” She bent down to untie them, but Mary walked in and stopped her.

“Leave them on,” Mary said.

“I’ll take them to be stretched.”

“No.” They had argued about this before—Mary insisting Tyler do something, Josie trying to soften her. Usually Josie could get Tyler to do what she wanted. She was a master of distraction, and Mary often wondered aloud how she had ever gotten Tyler out of the house before Josie. But in the last few weeks, as Josie spent less and less of her free time with Tyler, he had become more stubborn, as had Mary—insisting her son be obedient, compliant, normal. It was ridiculous, but Josie quietly conceded.

“Mary …” Josie tried.

“He has to learn. People aren’t going to be coddling him forever.”

“I’m not coddling him,” Josie said. This seemed a pointless struggle, a power game Mary was unfairly playing, and with Tyler nonetheless. Josie felt a swell of indignation burn through her chest. You couldn’t play games with an unwilling participant.

“If they hurt Maddy, you’d take them off her.”

“He’s not Maddy.”

“No kidding,” Josie muttered. She bent to pull the shoes from his feet.

“Leave them on!” Mary yelled.

Tyler cried louder and Josie didn’t move. She wanted to be angry, to turn and spit out something horrible—he does know, she could say, he knows you love Maddy more—but what did it matter? Mary was right, and Josie felt like she often did under her mother’s gaze, that weighted feeling, as if Mary had draped her with a leaded X-ray gown. “Fine,” Josie said.

“Good,” Mary said, and Josie knew that the tiny space they had wedged between them had just widened.

Josie waited until she heard the slam of the front door and then pulled the shoes from Tyler’s feet.

“You can wear your sandals until Mommy gets home,” she told him. “Now go play in the backyard for a bit.” She got him a juice box, sent him outside, and sat down to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. Last week Mary had taken Tyler to the library. “Just the two of us,” she had told him, but within half an hour they were home again—Tyler sobbing, Mary storming out of the house to her office. Josie hadn’t said anything, but Mary had scoffed at her on the way out. Josie took a deep breath and read the same page again.

“Josie,” Tyler called.

“I’m in my room!” she yelled.

“There’s a bird outside.” He stood in the doorway with a long stick in his hand.

“That’s good,” she said absentmindedly. “What kind of bird?”

“A red bird,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

He stood there, not moving.

“Why don’t you go look up what kind of bird it is,” she said and shut the book to check her e-mail.