Val shrugged. There was no chance of that. The evening before, Tony had complained that she’d served burgers twice in a week, saying that any fool could grill a burger. He’d also complained about dust on the windowsill in the living room and sticky fingermarks on the TV screen, and she’d braced herself for a slap that didn’t come. He hadn’t hit her for a while now. Maybe that was the most she could expect after the death of a parent: a temporary cessation of violence.

Nicole ran over in her white sundress with a strawberry print, her skin golden from the sun. “Come see our castle,” she urged, holding out her hand. “A fairy princess lives inside and there’s a goblin in the moat who is trying to capture her.”

Val loved the stories that emerged from her daughter’s head—a mixture of characters from the bedtime stories they read every night and her own lively imagination—but the effort it took to respond sometimes felt phenomenal. She willed herself to stand up, take the weight in her legs, and walk to the sandbox, but nothing happened. She couldn’t do it. Peggy gave her a puzzled look and went over instead.

“Is that a drawbridge?” she asked, crouching to admire the sandcastle. “You’d better lift it so the goblin can’t run across.”

“Maybe he can swim,” Nicole suggested.

“I reckon your fairy princess will know a good spell to stop him.”

Nicole clapped her hands with glee, and she and Lenny began inventing nonsense words that might work as a magic spell.

Peggy returned to where Val was sitting and put a hand on her shoulder, her eyes full of concern. “Want me to keep Nicole for the afternoon so you can go home and get some shut-eye? You look done in.”

Val shook her head. She might not be any use as a mom at the moment, but she needed Nicole around. Her daughter’s happy chatter and innocent take on the world were the only things keeping her remotely sane.

* * *

Nicole started at primary school and was immensely proud of her school uniform, with its pleated gray skirt and short-sleeved white blouse. Peggy complained that Lenny never told her what he had done at school during the day, but Nicole always rushed out to the playground in a breathless torrent of words.

“Today the teacher told us a story from days of yore. Do you know about days of yore, Mommy? It’s like the past, when they had knights in armor and unicorns.”