Nora gathered and shuffled the cards. She would win again. Would always win. Annie felt so confused: full of love and desire for Lew but pity also. Not the slightly revolted pity one reserves for the weak and helpless, but that shriving pity one feels for something beautiful, powerful, that has been trapped and is to be broken. She loved to be with Raj, who was funny, silly, elusive, and brilliant. She hated herself for thinking in practical ways, but Lew was never going to graduate from high school, while Raj was being courted by the Ivy Leagues, would live in an exciting place. Unlike Nora, though, she couldn’t marshal her resources to one end. She wasn’t even sure what her resources were or how to refine them. They felt vast and useless, great forests and tracts of prairie, which she faced without skills or tools, envying those with a house and garden. Besides, to decide felt like death. She wanted everything. She wanted them both, and she wanted more.

Trying to clear her head, she glanced back at Evy, whose only interest was boys. She looked as if her limbs had melted beneath her. She was the youngest daughter, the most spoiled and loved. Her brutish sisters sat around gnawing on human bones, while little Evy just chewed delicately upon a sugared earlobe or pickled pinkie.

Evy caught her staring. “What are you smiling at?”

“I think if someone you love dies, you should eat them,” Annie said.

“What made you think of that?” Evy screwed up her face. “That’s disgusting. Eeewww.” She always seemed as if she were slightly over-acting.

“Don’t you think so, Nor?” Annie asked.

“I hope my dad doesn’t die, then,” Nora said. “I’m on a diet.”

Annie persisted. “Seriously, Nor, could you eat someone?”

Nora shrugged, still focused on the game. “If I had to.”

“Eeewww, stop it.” Evy flapped her hands.

“If we were in a desperate situation,” Annie said, “I’d be the first one to die, Evy would be next, and Nora would survive.”

Nora glanced up at Annie from her cards, smiling, and singsonged like radio chimes, “I don’t think so.”

“You think I’d eat you and Evy?”

“Stop talking about eating people. You guys are so weird.”

“Sebastiana Regina Celli,” Nora intoned calmly, “you wouldn’t even wait until we were dead. You’d slit our throats in the night and you’d feel bad for just a little while.” Nora made a pinch of her fingers to show how little that while would be, before attending to her cards again.