Her eyes are wide when she says, “No, I don’t want to go with them. I want to stay here. I was just kidding. I don’t want to leave. Please don’t. Please just let me stay here. I don’t want to leave you and Otter. You need my help, right? With the babies? I’ll do a good job. I promise. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll stay quiet and won’t complain about anything and I—”

“Izzie.”

She looks stricken.

“I need you to listen to me, okay? Can you do that?”

She nods, but she won’t look up at me.

“No one, and I mean no one, will ever make you leave. I want you here. Otter wants you here. I promise, okay? If you want to stay here in the Green Monstrosity, then you can do just that. This is our home, and that means you. And we’re going to need so much help. In case you haven’t noticed, Otter and I really don’t know what we’re doing.”

“You guys are kind of pathetic,” she says, sniffling as she wipes her eyes. “I think you’d be lost without me.”

“Probably,” I agree. “And I need you to hear me on one more thing, okay?”

“I know what you’re going to say. I know he didn’t mean it.”

“Do you?”

She shrugs.

“He didn’t mean it. And he’ll be home to tell you exactly that in a little bit, just as soon as he’s done listening to JJ’s guitar concert.”

She snaps her head up and looks at me in horror. “No one deserves that kind of punishment.”

I shrug. “Eh. I bet he’s gritting his teeth right now and telling himself this is his fault. He’s—can I tell you something about him?”

“Is it going to be gross and have to do with all your feelings that you have with each other?”

“Wow. When you put it like that—yes. Yes it will.”

She sighs. “If you must.”

“Back when we were much younger and much stupider—”

“You were stupider than you are now? That’s a feat that boggles the mind. How are you alive?”

“I have no idea,” I admit. “But just shut up and listen to me for a moment.”

“Yikes. I am fragile right now and you tell me to shut up? What if that sets me back?”

“When we were younger and stupider, Otter fell in love with me.”

She sighs dreamily. Then, “If you tell anyone I just did that, I will kick your shins.”

“Noted. But Otter, being Otter—and also me being essentially illegal since I was sixteen—decided that instead of owning up to his feelings for me, he ran far, far away to the mythical land known as California.”

“Wow,” she says. “What a wuss.”

“Right? But to be fair, I was dating Anna at the time, and—”

“You what?”

“Yeah, we were together for, like, three years. Maybe four.”

“And now she’s married to your best friend.”