The New Hampshire house looked large from the outside, but it was tight and narrow inside. The bedrooms were all connected to the main hallway, some with their own bathrooms, some with steps or doors that opened into other bedrooms, other, smaller staircases. It was a labyrinth of hand-stitched quilts and cool-toned walls, windows with frayed rope and painted sills that got sticky in humidity. The wood planks of the floor were three times the width of their linoleum counterparts at home, laid down back when nature was plump and ripe for the picking. The ceilings upstairs were low enough that Silas could touch them with his head if he stood on his toes. Lily had always found the old-world feel charming, but now it was suffocating. She opened the windows in Mickey’s room and pushed apart the curtains, letting in the summer air, slow and lazy. She would need to put a fan in there if Mickey and Ruth were going to get any sleep. She made the bed, a double that would hopefully be big enough for the two girls. There were enough rooms in the house that Mickey and Ruth didn’t have to share, but when Lily mentioned that, Mickey said that they obviously would anyway with such vehemence Lily didn’t argue. The truth was, Lily didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what Mickey was like for that long around a friend. Mickey had always been a quiet kid, drawn inward. Silas and Lily never went hangdog to a parent-teacher conference on her behalf, the way they had many times for Sean. But Mickey had also never listened to someone the way she listened to Ruth. Like a believer.

Lily could hear splashes and laughter but couldn’t see the girls out beyond the boathouse. The lawn between them was thick, green, and lovely, a demonstration of the word “alive.” The grass under the bird feeders was already padded flat by the bunnies that nibbled there in the early mornings. Lily made a mental note to refill the feeders. She took her time with the girls’ pillowcases and, lingering over the corners, pulling and tightening, smoothed down one of the quilts Silas’s mother had made. Mickey wouldn’t care; she wouldn’t even notice. But Lily liked making things nice for her daughter. She liked the idea of her sleeping on a pillowcase Lily had touched.

Lily next stopped in front of Sean’s door, which had once been Silas’s door. She could hear Sean on the other side, his phone making the sounds of some game he played constantly but refused to explain to her.

“Knock, knock.”

“What?”

“I’m going to make the bed,” she said as she moved Sean’s backpack to the floor. “Don’t bite my head off.”