The porter at the door clears his throat. “Welcome to your suite. I trust you’ll find it to your liking, decorated in the style of King Louis the Fifteenth. I assure you no detail has been spared. Please ring any of the bells placed about the living quarters for an attendant and one will be with you shortly.”

The moment the door closes behind him Lena dissolves into a fit of giggles. “Why on earth would King Louis the what-have-you style be what we want?” She gestures to the general absurdity of the suite. There’s even a golden statue of a cherub blowing a trumpet in the corner.

“Wasn’t he the little creep who was obsessed with clocks? Or was that his son? Which one was beheaded?” Maxine drums her fingers along the polished dining table, leaving a trail of smeared fingerprints in her wake. “You know, they call this the Versailles of the Atlantic. Let’s hope it ends better for us than it did for them.”

I wish I had it in me to laugh, but I’m still feeling green in the gills. Is it possible to be preemptively seasick?

Lena appears at my side and crouches down to lay her head on my shoulder, gazing out the window alongside me. “I hate it too,” she says. “Something terrifying about coming face-to-face with endless nothingness.”

I take a jab at her ribs. “Have you always been this profound? My, you are an artist.”

She jabs me back and rolls her eyes. “Maybe I got smarter away from you and Maxine.”

From the settee, Maxine yells, “You know I can hear you, right?”

I wish I had the distraction of unpacking, but they’ve managed to do that for us too. In the smaller room with the two brass beds off the main living quarters, Lena and I find our clothing already hung up. We don’t have much between us. I’m sure we’ll end up stealing whatever Maxine has brought as we usually do.

We find Maxine in the master bedroom sprawled out on a four-poster bed. “You look like King Louis himself,” I say.

“I’d look better in the crown.”

“You’d make a prettier head in a basket, too,” Lena agrees.

We kick off our boots and throw ourselves onto the bed with Maxine, and staring up at the heavy velvet canopy, their warm bodies next to mine, it is easy to imagine we are back at Haxahaven once more.

I’ve never left New York before, never had a reason to until now, but I still feel at home, here, with them. The kind of warmth that buzzes just above my rib cage, the kind I feared I’d never feel again after my brother’s death. It’s the comfort I craved so badly I nearly ruined my own life. The comfort of knowing the people who love me won’t always leave me.