Molly had sautéed some salmon steaks with tomatoes and black olives, and she’d baked an apple pie. There was no drinking to speak of. Catherine kept telling us she was the driver; she didn’t drink at all. The rest of us weren’t knocking back the beer. After his second helping of pie, Arthur was antsy to leave; his pajamas and the ball drop beckoned him home, although the Barretts lived close by and it was nowhere near midnight. When my mom and Molly went out, the night groomer never had more than two beers; Molly was always the driver. “I’ll drive you home, Grace, when Ray and I go home—if you want to stay and watch the ball drop with us,” the trail groomer told her.

The lead-up to the ball drop was already on TV, after the elder Barretts went home and Grace was helping us clean up in the kitchen. Grace and I rinsed the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, while my mother and Molly wiped down the dining-room table and put away the leftovers. That was when Grace made two observations about Em and me, as writers. “I know you and Emily MacPherson are friends, and your writing has certain similarities—you both write about dysfunctional families, and you both like semicolons,” Grace said.

I told Grace how I hadn’t known Emily MacPherson was writing fiction until my students and I started reading her at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Em had never told me, I explained to Grace. “But you and Em must write to each other now, don’t you? Writers who are friends write to each other, don’t they?” Grace asked me. As an editor, Grace understood fiction, and she knew fiction writers.

“Em is writing a third-person omniscient novel right now,” I started to say, but I already knew I couldn’t bullshit Grace. I didn’t try to convince Grace that writing a novel in the third person precluded Em from writing me in the first person. “Em needs to feel a sense of detachment from herself in order to write about the Gallows Lounge shooting. I think Em needs to live in the third person for a while—maybe writing letters is too personal right now. We seem to have stopped writing letters to each other, for now,” I told Grace. My mom and Molly kept quiet.

“Em seems eccentric, even for a fiction writer,” Grace said.

“Em is eccentric—isn’t she, sweetie?” my mother called from the dining room. I looked at Molly, who was putting the leftover salmon and apple pie in the fridge. The old ski patroller just stared back at me, as if my inside edges were in need of attention.