“Yep.” John took his keys from the corner of the desk. “Just have to run out for a bit.”

“Where are you going?” she blurted out, then wondered about the question as it flew. Why would she care where John was going? She didn’t. She just wanted to tug on the mask. It was bugging her. There was a whole other why for that one, but she would watch first and pick it apart later.

John ticked his head to the side, a little flinch of the eyes and mouth in puzzlement that he erased as soon as it had arranged itself on his face. “I just have a few things to do. What do you need?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you came in for some reason.” His voice had an exasperated edge that she hadn’t earned.

He was right, of course. She had come in for a reason, but a better one flared up behind her eyes. Not. Normal. Your. Move. She pulled her hands from her pockets and jammed them down onto her hips. She conjured up a look made of a slack sneer and half-mast eyes, and gaped at him like he was the stupidest person ever to take a breath. “Um, because it’s a room. In my house. And I live here, if that’s okay with you? God! What is your problem?”

Her heart pounded. Her cheeks burned. Normal John would call out not-normal Carly. She would never speak to him like that. She would never speak to anyone like that. Normal John would ask her what was wrong. Or maybe get mad. It would be worth it.

“Okay! Jeez!” He put up his hands, keys still clutched in the right one, in mild surrender. But he looked relieved, as if he’d gotten an easy out. “Excuse me for living. See you later, Grouchy.” He walked past her and called his goodbye down the hall to her mother.

She was still on her call and waved to him around the corner of the wall.

Carly hovered in the doorway to the dining room, which they never dined in. It should be the homework room. Or the wrapping-presents room. Or one-of-the-places-Mom-takes-her-laptop-and-talks-on-the-phone room. Just not the dining room. The call went on and on and Carly paced the foyer in meandering loops down to John’s office.

She listened for sounds that the conversation was winding down, but it was rolling like waves—a listening silence, her mother’s turn to talk, listening silence again. Carly lapped John’s office, looking at the books on the shelves and the labels on the row of craft-beer bottles he kept for . . . She didn’t know why he kept them. She circled as if she didn’t have a plan to open the desk drawers, which she totally did.