“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.

The air thinned, and Molly squinted through it. James was still asleep in his chair and Beth was standing in the doorway in a dress shirt with her breasts pushing gaps between the buttons. She gripped a leather duffel. “Molly?” she said, uncertainly. “What’s going on?”

“We forgot the cake,” Molly said.

“Why is James Masterson here?” Beth looked at James like he was a weasel who’d crawled in under the door. A smell rose off her, the wrong kind of hormone.

“I’ll get rid of him.”

Molly had screwed up. Why was it her instinct to bury a mess with another mess? Once at a party she’d disguised a wine stain on a linen rug with a turned-over platter of deviled eggs. As soon as she forced her feet to move she shook James awake, his mouth spilling drool down his bone marrow shirt.

“Hi, girls,” he said.

Beth stared at Molly like she didn’t know her. Molly hoped it wasn’t a relationship-ending stare. She suspected it was.

“Come on, James,” Molly said. “Let’s get you back to your room.” She grabbed his arm, but it was limp.

“Oh, my murderer,” he said. The words froze Molly’s spine.

Molly flinched. “He’s high,” she said. “I’ll walk him home.” She propped James upright, but he couldn’t stabilize. She passed Beth with the boy held out before her like a floppy shield.

Beth peered into his dazed face. “James?”