The only thing that brought Poppy any measure of comfort when she was up in the night was addressing Death himself. Don’t you take him from me, she admonished as she curled even tighter into her husband’s big, warm, sleeping shape in that gray, artificially chilled bedroom. Don’t you dare take him from me. See, Poppy didn’t care when or how she went, so long as she was the first to go. This was her only demand. Take me first.

The basement bedroom was charming, with a white wicker chair that held several American dolls and some vintage copies of children’s classics: Peter Rabbit, The Rainbow Fish, Goodnight Moon. There were two sets of sturdy bunk beds, the frames a striking dark-stained maple. Blue comforters. A box of Kleenex and two candles on the bed stand, one that smelled like cake, the other like fresh laundry.

Kimmy and Alex both opted for the bottom bunk. After this had been established, Alex had come up with the idea to remove the sheet from the top bunk and tuck one edge of it under the top mattress so that her bottom bunk was like the interior of a tent.

Kimmy immediately copied this idea. “I’ve always wanted a canopy bed,” she exclaimed. “You are so smart.”

Once the girls had been tucked in and were convinced the grown-ups were far from earshot, they got out of their beds, all toothpaste whispers and giggles, crept outside their bedroom and into the rec room, then up the stairs, slowly and quietly in case somebody was still awake in the main room, but no one was. The blue flashing light of a TV was on in John and Poppy’s room, but that was the only sign of life.

The girls hadn’t developed any sort of plan beyond “Let’s sneak upstairs!” “Yes, let’s!” “But we have to be careful in case anyone is still awake.” “We can’t get caught!”

But now that they were here, this space and everything in it held infinitely more intrigue than it had in the daytime. They snuck around the main room exploring, a need to touch everything, nighttime adrenaline surging. They wordlessly picked up coasters, set them across the coffee table in a nice pattern, collected and stacked them as they had been before. They drew fingers across all of the shelving, examined the dust they recovered. Lifted the cushions of the couch, sniffed beneath them, stifled giggles.

Eventually, the appeal of this activity was depleted and they returned to their bedroom. On the way, the girls were distracted by the fact that the TV was still on in Poppy and John’s room, and so they failed to notice that, curiously, the light was now on in Ryan’s bedroom, where it had been dark just a few minutes earlier.

Back downstairs, they crawled into their beds, tucked their canopy curtain flaps back so that they could see each other, and chattered happily in the dark. Kimmy said, “That was really fun.”