We sold our house in Silver Lake and rented this house, sight unseen, in a town we’d never heard of. Kiki included three overtly tense rectangle-smile emojis, but, knowing Kiki, what she was really saying was It’s an undiscovered gem. You’ll see.

Moving from Los Angeles to upstate New York seemed a particularly strange choice, given Arman’s acting career. If it were any other couple, it might have sounded depressing. But because it was Kiki, because it was Kiki and Arman, moving to an unknown town in upstate New York with an infant seemed straight-up glamorous.

None of the four of them—amazingly, Sarah supposed—were on any social media. Matthew had a presence for his company, but that was different. When she searched out Arman and Kiki, Arman was on IMDb, and Sarah had turned up some reviews of a few films he’d been in. Kiki’s textile company had a website—which had popped up about five years ago during one of Sarah’s semihabitual Google searches. Kiki’s designs were made with ink and watercolor, the patterns abstract and lush.

Sarah kept her eyes closed and pictured one of Kiki’s underwater-kingdom images. What was she going to get the baby? She’d already made a special trip to a store in Boerum Hill, where she’d become overwhelmed with choices: tiny fleece vest? Exquisite ash-and-maple stacking blocks? The felt crowns and natural-fiber dollies and mobiles made from locally sourced tree branches sent her into a minor panic. It was such a perfectly curated aesthetic of how to raise a person. She hadn’t bought or made anything like this for her own daughter. Would any of it have helped? A silly thought—how could it have possibly?—but she did wonder. She questioned everything.