She turned her eyes to look out the window. I followed her gaze. The bird appeared to be staring at us.

“I never cry anymore,” she said.

I understood why. Amelia had taken the role of the person who cries.

Natalie stood and walked to the window. “Why is it looking at us?” The bird didn’t move. “My mom wasn’t like this before she was obsessed by a baby. She didn’t cry all the time. She just worked.”

She collapsed her body onto the large beanbag in the middle of the room. “Sometimes people came to take a tour of the house. Mom was happy because they’d say it was beautiful.”

She leaned back on the beanbag and pulled her knees tightly into her chest. “And then sometimes, on those days, me and Mom went to the bookstore and got ice cream sundaes.”

“You’ll do those things again.”

I heard a loud noise and turned in time to see the bird crashing head-on into the window. Natalie screamed. The cardinal dropped toward the ground.

Natalie leapt to the far side of the room, away from the windows. “Help!”

“It’s OK.” I walked to the window and looked down.

A minute later Fritz appeared in the bedroom doorway. “What’s wrong?”

“That bird tried to break into the house!” Natalie cried.

“A cardinal sometimes attacks its reflection in the glass,” Fritz said. “It thinks it sees another bird.”

Natalie was still breathing heavily. “Is he dead?” she asked me.

“I think so,” I said.

She chewed on her nails in an agitated manner. She seemed to feel complicit in the bird’s death because she’d witnessed it. “It’s such a stupid bird.” She approached the window. “Why couldn’t he tell it was a reflection?” She gestured toward her own barely visible image in the glass. “It doesn’t look real. It doesn’t look like anything.”

I put my arm around her shoulders.

“Let’s go downstairs for a drink,” Fritz said, “to take the edge off.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Downstairs I found Amelia frenetically cleaning the kitchen counters, though they appeared clean already. She was rubbing one spot repeatedly, as if it were stained. She looked up when I entered.

“I think we should celebrate,” she said. “I think we should draw up a legal document.” She was speaking fast, and her eyes were bouncing around the room.

Natalie turned on the television in the media room. Fritz sat at the dining table with a bourbon and soda to sort a stack of mail. Amelia and Fritz were acting as if they’d forgotten about their plans to go out.

“You two should leave whenever you need to,” I said.

“Amelia,” Fritz said, “we’ve gotta make an appearance.” He pushed the stack of mail aside and disappeared upstairs with his bourbon and soda.