“I know,” said Molly, and now that Chowder was dead, she sort of meant it. All his dumb affection had value, probably.

“You must really love her,” James said.

Molly smelled a trap, but she was curious. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re crying over a dog.”

“You’re crying too.” He was, though his streaming tears didn’t dilute his rational tone.

“They’re just dogs. He was sort of old, right? Dogs die. They just die. You know, at our farm? Dogs were always dying. We threw the extra litters into Canada.”

“I thought you were from Greenwich, Connecticut.” Everyone here was either from New York City or Greenwich, Connecticut.

“What? No. North Dakota.” James struggled up in the chair, as though attempting a more dignified pose. He threw out an arm in a loose-jointed gesture. “The point is, they’re animals. They do the best they can. Like people come here more for Chowder than Beth. He did his job, and now he’s gone.”

“Not naturally, though.” Molly squeezed her eyes shut. She was hit with Chowder’s claws scraping the river bottom, his eyes popping nerves.

“Still.”

Molly was beyond high, out of her mind. She was in the sky above Prospect Street, watching the plain square of Hurlbut Hall. In the open air it was evident that Beth loved her with the most energy of anyone Molly had ever been with. That Beth was the smartest person Molly had ever known, the most patient with Molly’s flimsy musical career, her fake job. Who cared about her prudishness, her stress? Those features hardly mattered when you looked at the whole of their life together. “Yes, I do. Very much.”

“Do what?” asked James.

Molly shook the hot idea from her head. “Never mind.”

“We should distract you,” James said. “Let’s cook something.”

“Like, what, spaghetti?” Molly subsisted on day-old hot dogs and hot dog accoutrements. A bowl of relish and cabbage shards was almost a salad. She topped it with a toxic yellow swirl of mustard.

“Like a cake, maybe.” James jumped up and bounced on his heels.

“That’s silly.” But she liked the idea: Beth coming home to fresh cake, Molly acting, for once, all domestic and responsible.

They stirred together quantities of flour, sugar, Swiss Miss, maple syrup, mini marshmallows, frozen blueberries, and rice milk. They left the mixture lumpy, at James’s insistence, to “preserve tenderness.” They slid the cake into the oven with the heat all the way up, to bake it faster. They smoked again. They fell asleep in the armchairs.

When Molly woke, the door was already open and the smoke alarm was already screeching high, even wails through the clouded air. She might have slept through all that if Beth weren’t shouting, “Are you okay? Molly?” Beth saying her name, even sharply, always got her. Molly sat up, stood up, stumbled, and fought for the kitchen through the smoke. Somehow, still high, she managed to turn off the oven and remove the battery in the alarm and open all the windows before she realized she was moving. Smoke alarms were familiar rivals.