Ify notices a new plaque above the front door. Emblazoned on the raised wood is the phrase Wir schaffen das.

Just as she’s about to press her palm to the scanner, the front door slides open and Paige spreads her arms and shrieks her welcome. “Ify!” Instantly, she swallows Ify in her embrace, smushing Ify’s face into the loosely tied once-gold, now-silver ponytail draped over her shoulder. “Oh, so glad you could make it. Come, come, come.” And she nearly drags Ify by the arm over the threshold. “IFY’S IN!” Paige shouts up the front steps all the way to the second floor, even though a biometric scan would have announced Ify by now. Paige turns to Ify. “You’re just in time, dinner’s just about ready.”

Paige still hasn’t let go of Ify’s arm as they pass through the living room with its hand-knitted pillows and blankets, past a music room where untouched instruments have been collecting dust for at least a year and a half now, and into the joint dining room/kitchen.

Steam fills the room, billowing in clouds so thick Ify coughs. Paige waves some of it away to reveal Amy in a loose pink sleeveless gown bent over a boiling pot of red sauce. She scoops some out with a wooden spoon.

Paige nudges Ify forward, and Ify skids to a halt just far enough away that Amy, without pausing, can turn and put the spoon right to Ify’s lips.

“Too hot! Too hot!” Ify leaps away and flaps at her tongue and lips. “Mrs. Reed!”

Paige puts her fists to her hips. “Oh, there she goes with that Mrs. Reed nonsense again! Well, Ify, if Amy’s Mrs. Reed, then what am I, huh?”

Ify instinctively ducks her head amid the chaos of their playful shouting. “Can I at least sit down?”

Amy shoos Ify away with her dripping spoon, and Ify takes a seat in one of the faux-wooden antique bistro chairs by the rectangular table. Paige sits at the head and gazes lovingly at Amy as her wife cooks.

Ify snatches the woven basket of warm bread rolls from beside Paige’s elbow and stuffs one into her mouth. “What’s with the sign?”

“The sign?” Paige asks.

“Yeah, out front.” She rests her hand on the table, and up from her gloved palm floats a holographic snapshot of the sign above the front door. “Wir schaffen das?”

“Oh, that was Amy’s idea. It’s German. Right, Amy?”

Amy, back turned to them, nods.

“It means We will do it, or something like that.”

Ify swallows the rest of the first roll but takes her time with the second. “Do what? Is it like in a football game? Or getting high marks on an exam?”

“No, more like . . .” Paige considers the ceiling.