When dinner’s over, I carry the pot of broken claws and picked-over bodies outside. The night is quiet, just the lull of the waves lapping against the barn with the incoming tide, and the sound of our sailboat rocking within. Inside, Dad’s sitting with Dalia and Fiona around the candlelit table and it looks warm and cozy and completely foreign, like I’m gazing into some other family’s house.

Even my own room looks unfamiliar with Fiona’s makeshift mattress on the floor. When we go to bed, her mom comes in and kisses her on the forehead, which kind of hurts to watch, though she says good night to, too. Fiona’s eyes are still open after her mom leaves. “You think there are mermaids in the ocean?” she asks, and I tell her no. Then she asks about the countries on the globe again, what their names are. After that, she asks what life was like before the flood.

“There were more people,” I say. “Lots of kids, too. They’d ride bikes and you could go almost anywhere you wanted.” I don’t tell her about the toys floating in backseats or how neighbors fought for food in those last days before they drowned. Don’t say how Dad dragged me past all those people in the flooded supermarket aisles, or how I saw a man punch another to reach a cereal box above the waterline. And I don’t tell her how Mom disappeared with Randy on his yacht. But I do tell her about television, and how once upon a time there were stores upon stores with toys and electronics.

Fiona’s asleep long before I get to the part about what the world down below looks like now. I lie in bed and listen to the rain tapping against the roof, and the sound of the waves outside. There’s a low, stifled noise, which I finally place as the unfamiliar sound of my father’s laughter. I can’t hear what they’re saying, so I get out of bed and sneak into the hallway, stepping carefully so as not to make the floor squeak.

“It’s hard taking care of him alone,” Dad says, speaking softly like I haven’t heard him talk to anyone except Mom. “She abandoned us, but he still misses her.”

Taking care of me, I think. I’ve been the one taking care of him all these years.

“He’s going to be okay,” Dalia says. “And you don’t have to do it alone anymore. We’ll take care of each other. You think he’ll want to come?”

“I’ll talk to him. If I say we’ve got to move by spring, then that’s how it’ll be. The house is rotting anyway. He doesn’t realize how little time we’ve got left.”