Maybe Esme and Andrea’s son could play together sometime. Ronnie could only imagine what Jerrod would think about that—he wasn’t accepting in the slightest—but she’d had some experience with transgender women at Kittens, and as they put it, they’d been women their whole lives; they just didn’t know it at first. Fuck Jerrod, she thought. Jerrod didn’t matter. For all she knew, Jerrod was . . . well, she didn’t want to think about that. She considered Vanessa, too. Sometimes her sister popped into her thoughts, unbidden, but she was even more awful to think about, so she pushed both thoughts from her mind.

When she stepped out of the shower, Esme was sitting on the counter, her little legs swinging. “Can we play Lava Floor?”

“Uh, sure. A quick game before dinner.” Lava Floor was a game Esme and Ronnie and Lane made up that involved scattering a bunch of pillows around the room and jumping from one to the next. Probably every kid generation played the game—Ronnie remembered playing it with Vanessa when they were little, too.

After Ronnie was dried and dressed, they walked to the living room and started scattering the pillows. Lane, who was looking at something on his phone, grinned at them. “Lava Floor?” He smiled. “I’ll play.” He set down the phone and pulled up a couch cushion.

“I want Mr. Nibbles to play, too,” Esme decided. Mr. Nibbles was her stuffed bear; Ronnie had bought him for her a few days after they’d first moved to the apartment, and she carried him around everywhere. Though when Ronnie looked around, she didn’t see the toy in plain view.

“Oh!” Esme said, remembering. “I took him to school today. He’s in my backpack.”

“I’ll grab him,” Ronnie said, spying the backpack on the kitchen table. It was in the shape of Rainbow Dash, the My Little Pony Pegasus with the colorful mane. Ronnie slowly unzipped the main compartment and plunged her hand inside, finding Mr. Nibbles right away. “Here you go,” she said, tossing the stuffed animal to Esme, who was already jumping from pillow to pillow.

She was about to put the backpack down when she noticed something else in the bottom, an iPad-like device. She’d heard about these. Each child was given the device, free of charge; on it were preloaded educational games as well as video and art apps so the kids could record their artwork and observations. She thought of the conversation she’d overheard at the breakfast between the moms of kids Esme’s age who were already reading.