“Frosted Flakes!” she squeals, turning to look at me, and when she does I can picture her at five, or six, or seven, her face wide open and full of joy, the way Teddy’s used to be at that age. “I love Frosted Flakes! My moms never let me have them.”

I reach for the box and beckon her out of the fake pantry into the fading autumn light of the kitchen. “I’ll let you have some.”

* * *

What starts as one bowl of cereal for Phoebe turns into two (hers looked really good and I didn’t want her to eat alone), and then four, after Nick and Gary come upstairs. We finish the first box, and then Gary comes back with a second one, secreted from a high cabinet over the stove that I can’t reach and always forget is even there. God knows what else he hides up there.

“A spare,” he says, ripping open the blue cardboard top instead of slipping his thumb under the tab the way the directions say. “You never know when the munchies will strike.”

“Oh Gary,” I say. “Munchies is such an eighties word.”

“Well, I’m an eighties guy.”

“Besides, we had an agreement.” I point at Gary from across the cereal box. “No. Smoking. When. Teddy’s. Home.”

“We didn’t smoke!”

I stop, sniff, and realize he might be telling the truth.

“Edi-pulls,” Nick whispers then, giggling, takes a tiny packet out of his pants pocket, under his billowing costume, and shows it to me. “Oedipal’s Edibles.”

I take that as my cue to start the conversation about logistics; the when and how of their stay—three weeks, starting Friday; going through the week or so after the end of Inhabitancy, which would put us into mid-November; how they’ll stay in the snoring room in the basement and use the bathroom and shower on the second floor.

“You’ll share Teddy’s bathroom.”

“I’m sure he’ll love that,” Nick says.

“It’s good for him,” Gary says. “He’s an only child. He needs to learn to share.”

* * *

After the cereal and after the tour, after we’ve forced Teddy to come out of his room to say “goodbye and see you soon” to the People Puppets, Gary and I walk Nick and Phoebe to their car, parked at the end of our driveway, right behind the Volvo—a People Puppet Theater minivan—the kind I’d refused to buy when Teddy was small—with nylon animal hooves on the roof that inflate when the van is in motion. Nick presses his key, and when the side door slides open, he climbs in and stands, almost upright, in the middle of all the seats and cup holders and boxes of theater gear. Then he bends down and reaches into one of their costume cases—a big trunk with a fake padlock on it just for show.

“Now, here’s something I think Gary would love,” he says, pulling out a huge white sheet with a hooded beak attached. He gathers it up, hops down out of the minivan, and holds it up against himself, striking a pose. “‘Free Bird.’”