“Oh man, it’s the white vinyl Deluge. Look, Papa.” The accent is on the second syllable. Cate particularly hates when Joe gets all Frenchy with Claude. “Thanks, Cate.” He comes over and gives her a sideways hug, banging his hip against her. Something has pulled him closer to her, she’s not sure what.

“How’s it going?” she asks him. He has grown a little just in the few weeks since she’s seen him. He is sliding into his teens. He at first seems not to have heard her but then says, “It’s okay. Really. Different, but okay.” He’s a little diplomat; he wants everything to be okay again for his mother. Also, he’s thrilled to have his father back. He’s not thinking this might once again be a temporary situation. Claude has, in the past, followed up hugely interested with not so interested after all.

Claude puts the salads on the table. Neale gets out of the oven a loaf of that bread that’s almost baked and you just polish it off yourself. She tries to take it out barehanded, says damn, then drops it on the floor, then picks it up with a dishcloth as a potholder. Her hands are a tapestry of small suffering from pots of inadvertently spilled pasta water, thoughtlessly gripped oven racks and pot handles. It’s like she has this one, very specific cognitive delay. It’s too endearing. Cate feels a brimming at the back of her eyes.

Talk skitters around the table. Joe likes his new school here better than the one in Chicago except that it doesn’t have Kiera. He wouldn’t say he has friends yet, but no one is beating him up in minor, deviously non-bruising ways, which did happen in Chicago. The capricious and cruel tactics of the new administration, of course, drift into the conversation. (The only conversations within Cate’s earshot that don’t feature the president are those where a moratorium is imposed at the outset. “Let’s not talk about him today. It’s too depressing.”) At the moment, he’s trying to put in place a new travel ban, which is almost exactly the previous travel ban.

“I’m waiting for France to go on the list of banned countries,” Claude says. “We French are a danger to someone who likes his meat well-done.”

Neale wants to know about the new play Cate is working on, a futuristic romance Molly and Lauren are trying out in the summer on the Santa Barbara launchpad.

It’s a struggle for Cate, getting through the meal. It’s difficult eating lettuce, talking in an anodyne way about her work and not crying, all at the same time.

When they’re finishing up, a tour of the town is suggested, also a game of Clue, which is an old favorite.