Mr. Barlow told me that Em had been practicing more than Madeline. Most nights, when the snowshoer went to bed, she fell asleep listening to Em read aloud to herself. Elliot Barlow had heard Em reading her own novel, the one she was writing.

“What about Moby-Dick?” I asked Mr. Barlow. We’d both been there when Em tipped over the coffee table—her way of pantomiming that she was waiting for an upheaval of some kind, a certain moment when she intended to read Moby-Dick, now that she knew the novel wasn’t about a penis.

“I’ve not heard her reading Moby-Dick. This is not that moment, Adam—this is not the upheaval Em is waiting for,” the snowshoer said.

It was enough of an upheaval for me. Em was a long time putting Matthew to bed. “Matthew wanted to show me how he brushed his teeth, then he had to show me everything in his room, and he wanted to see my scar again,” Em told us, when she finally came downstairs. I couldn’t look at her, or she would have known I wanted to see her scar again, too. I thanked her for reading to Matthew, not looking at her. I knew what Em was going to say, because I knew how Grace would have pressured her. “I didn’t want Matthew to think I was weird. All my life, I haven’t cared that everyone thought I was weird. But I don’t want Matthew to think so,” Em said; she was looking right at me.

“I used to think you were pretty weird, but now I think you’re just a little strange,” my mother said to Em, hugging her. “We’re all a little strange—you especially, sweetie. Straight people are the strangest!” my mom declared, deciding she should hug me, too.

When I went upstairs, the four adults I loved most remained in the living room. They are all wound up; they’ll talk till dawn, I was thinking. I kissed everyone good night—Elliot and Em, Molly and my mother. I wasn’t surprised that Grace was awake; she was seething. “Your family is so weird—I won’t let them, or you, make Matthew weird,” she started.

“We won’t make Matthew weird,” I said to her.

“First Em seduces you, then my son—you don’t even know it’s obvious that you’re in love with her,” Grace told me.

“I am in love with her, but nothing can come of it,” I said.

“It’s a good thing we have so many bedrooms, and you’re used to sleeping in another one,” Grace told me. “Em can come visit you, in her fashion.”

“Do you want me to stay or go?” I asked.

“I heard Em, putting him to bed—I guess that’s what you want it to be like,” Grace told me.

“Matthew wanted Em to put him to bed,” I told her.