How easy it can feel, Sofia thinks. How simple it can be to slip into the role that is made for you. She and Antonia have the afternoon ahead of them. Paolo and Saul are out doing God-knows-what. And Antonia is healthy now, and Sofia is happy. Isn’t she?

Robbie, tired of Sofia standing still, reaches out and clasps a healthy handful of her hair in his hand and pulls it. Sofia looks at him and remembers where she is and hears Antonia talking to Julia in the kitchen, and feels the insistent warming air through the open window. “Let’s go find your mamma,” she says to Robbie. It’s what he has been hoping for the whole time.

Later that afternoon Robbie and Julia have been fed and bathed and they have been convinced to take another nap, curled together in Robbie’s crib. Sofia and Antonia have retreated into Antonia’s bed with a bottle of white wine and they have thrown the window open so they are breathing in the thick green smell of new leaves and grass; someone’s laundry; someone burning last year’s charred meat off the grill before dinner. The late afternoon sun is rich and runs like maple syrup, pouring down into the room, and there is something lazy and delicious swelling up in Sofia and Antonia, who rely on these afternoons, each in her own way, for reassurance. Sofia likes that with Antonia, always with Antonia, she is herself. And Antonia likes this: that Sofia thinks there is a way they could be the same people they once were. Antonia, who has spent the winter deep-sea diving into the darkest, most formidable parts of her own consciousness. Antonia relishes Sofia’s optimistic insistence that they can relax into selves that no longer exist.