“Oh.” She licked the back of her spoon, like she was licking an ice cream cone. “Seems weird to me. That you’re babysitting. Do you need the money?”

“That’s not your business.” I stood up and returned the box of Lucky Charms to the kitchen cabinet and the milk to the fridge. “You should go back to bed.”

“D’you go out a lot?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Where do you go?”

“Wherever.”

“So you have a lot of friends?”

What are friends? I go to three birthday parties a week. That’s more socializing than anyone needs. When I lived in Florida, my best friend got married. She asked me to be her maid of honor and then she changed her mind. We’d had an unusually close bond. I cared for her when she fell and broke several bones. Her fiancé was probably threatened by the strength of our relationship. He couldn’t handle the depth of her affection for me.

I heard the front door open and Amelia’s and Fritz’s footsteps. They appeared in the kitchen and saw me and Piper at the island. Dressed in winter coats and boots, eyes shining bright, faces flushed from the cold, they looked dashing.

“Hi, guys.” Amelia furrowed her brow in confusion. She and Fritz threw their coats on the hall bench and removed their boots.

“Piper had a nightmare,” I said.

“I’m OK.” Piper brought her cereal bowl to the ceramic farmhouse sink. “The radiator in Natalie’s room woke me up. Hashtag Noise. You guys should get it fixed. I don’t know how Natalie sleeps in that room.”

“Sure.” Fritz pursed his lips, perhaps to indicate that he appreciated the gravity of the problem, or perhaps he was trying not to laugh.

Once Piper was safely upstairs, Amelia cut her eyes at me. “That kid is a piece of work.”

I nodded, then gathered my belongings. “Listen, I’m sort of embarrassed to tell you this. I…”

“What?” Fritz asked.

“I took some pictures of your kitchen. It’s exquisite. One day, when I buy a house, I want to have a kitchen that looks like yours.” I gestured toward the cabinetry. “The workmanship on the cabinets. I took some photos so I don’t forget. Is that OK?”

Amelia laughed. “My God, I don’t care if you take pictures of the kitchen!”

Her laughter sounded like music to me, her voice lifting up to a high register, and then descending. In that instant I recognized my love for Amelia. I wasn’t sure how to describe it. My feeling was bigger than any label I could come up with.

I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my former colleague, Lana. She hadn’t called me for three months. For a while she’d been calling every day. She found out I’d slept with the man she was dating. I’d had no idea they were in a relationship. I only saw them together twice. One night, about six months earlier, I’d bumped into Christopher at an overpriced bar on Vanderbilt, and we started talking about photography. He wanted to walk me home and he ended up spending the night. I hadn’t talked to him since.