“And I get to tell everybody what to do?”

Katherine wailed a complaint.

“Sorry, champ,” Roy said. “You can be king for the day, but it doesn’t make you boss.”

It was a fine day for a birthday. A Saturday, when they could all be home together. A day with a bright, cloudless sky. Teresa had successfully smuggled the cake into the house the previous afternoon without Matt noticing, and had hidden the box behind the toaster and the Charles Chips can on top of the refrigerator. Their refrigerator. Their house. A mortgage existed with their names on it, the $2,800 down payment scraped together with the help of Roy’s parents. It made even scrubbing the toilets feel good. Having lived in apartments for most of her adult life and in a hotel for the duration of her first marriage, she caught herself wondering if property—ownership—had been the missing element all along. Her life had been a whirlwind, and this house secured it, like a paperweight holding down a stack of appliance warranties, the children’s birth certificates, their marriage license.

They’d moved in the month before, after renting an apartment in Cocoa for nearly a year. There were still a few boxes to unpack, and the walls were mostly bare; in the dining room hung a handful of school portraits, and over the television a pair of metal-framed photos Roy had recently brought home from work: group portraits of the astronauts from Apollo 9 and 10. Autographed, as if Roy knew the astronauts personally, though the signatures had been reproduced and the photos had been handed out to every Technicolor employee. It was part of the impetus for moving to Florida, this promise of employment at NASA, along with a higher standard of living, the warm weather, the nearby beach: enticements emphasized over and over again in the Chamber of Commerce booklet Roy’s father had mailed to them in D.C. “Brevard County—The Future for Your Family, Today.”