They have until morning. Cate has ducked out on Maureen, who was planning to fix cacio e pepe and put Mad Max: Fury Road on her giant flat-screen. Cate loves cacio e pepe, really loves Charlize Theron, and of course especially loves her with a phantom arm. She has replayed quite a number of times on YouTube the part where Charlize undoes the leather straps of her prosthesis and lets it drop onto the postapocalyptic sand. She basically thinks Fury Road is a masterpiece, so this was an extremely generous offer considering Maureen does not like violent movies and thinks Charlize Theron is too hot (whatever that means). So Cate feels bad about saying no, but opens up a big box of lies anyway. She’d love to come over but can’t. Her mother is throwing a work party up at her house, to launch the spring season. Although the spring season in retail does start in January, the party is imaginary.

Cate and Dana are both shy coming into the small foyer.

“Wow,” Cate says, craning her neck, taking in as much of the hall and living room as she can. A recliner facing the TV. A medium-size Arc de Triomphe, also a Leaning Tower lamp so large it could only have been bought in Pisa and dragged back here. There’s more. A poster with LOVE spelled out in blocks. A kitten dangling from a clothesline with HANG IN THERE typed across the bottom. “Your aunt, it looks like she’s cornered the global market on cheesy souvenirs and bad Pop art from the sixties and seventies.”

“Oh no you don’t. No professional snobbery here. This is borrowed decor. We’re not here to give it a rating.”

The evidence suggests Aunt Vicky is a woman deep into creature comforts. She has a giant bed facing a second giant flat-screen TV. She has also managed to fit a whirlpool into the house’s small bathroom. The tub has a terry-covered plastic pillow suctioned to one side. Several slinky Polynesian-print robes hang from hooks on the inside of the door. On a shelf above the toilet sits a complex machine that plays ambient sounds while it heats herbal oils.

In the whirlpool, Dana grabs hold of one of Cate’s toes and says, “How’s it going with you, mental-wise? I worry maybe you’re getting exhausted just trying to hold it together.”

“It comes and goes. I’m fine, fine and then instead of fine, I’m freaking out. And then I’m not freaking out but I’m very sad that people like them exist in the same world as Neale. That their sort of wicked foolishness can take down a really good person.”

“Oh, I think you won the round. And I think Neale’s going to be okay only because you won it.”