“You girls don’t know how to take care of anything.” He tried to circle around us, but Nin put her hand on his arm to keep him from leaving.

“Dad,” she said. “Where’s Mom?”

I blinked on my contacts and logged into Nostalgia. As far as I could see, Mom was still upstairs in their bed. Dad let out a white breath in the winter darkness, his knuckles blue around the rake.

“You girls made a mess,” he huffed.

“We’re sorry,” I said, and Nin took his arm softly.

“Come on, Dad. We’ll make you some coffee, okay? You can tell us how to take care of the leaves.”

Dad didn’t move, but his grip on the rake loosened. Then he looked past us toward the curb and all the leaves scattered there. “You made a goddamned mess.”

Inside, Nin and I sat bleary-eyed as Dad held his mug between his hands and told us that the woman upstairs wasn’t his wife.

“We know,” Nin said. “That’s what we were trying to tell you. It’s just a hologra—”

“She’s a damned kindergarten teacher.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“You’re all up early,” Mom said, walking into the kitchen. “What’s the celebration, sleepyheads?”

“She’s not my wife,” Dad repeated, oblivious to Mom without his contacts.

Mom began humming a song from our childhood. “What would you girls like for breakfast? Some chocolate-chip pancakes?”

“I think we better log her out,” Nin whispered. So we did and Mom was gone, her humming cut mid-note. Dad’s hands were shaking. I reached out and put my palms on his fists. “Explain it to us again,” I said.

It took a while, Dad mostly repeating that Mom wasn’t his wife—which didn’t make sense to either of us—but finally it began to grow clear: the nursery rhymes, the chocolate-chip pancakes, the singsong voice she’d slip into. The only recorded video feeds we’d uploaded had been Nin’s and my own, most of them from when we were kids. Mom’s hologram was closer to our childhood mother than the wife Dad knew, and though she’d entertained him last night with her novelty, after we went to bed she’d only wanted to talk about building a snowman together this winter.

We logged on to Nostalgia for an emergency hotline or email help center but found nothing. There was no contact form or FAQ page—just a stupid little cartoon fox that kept popping up in the corner of my vision and asking, What can I fox out for you?

“How do you get rid of that fucking fox?”

“I think the fox is our only hope,” Nin said. So I right-blinked on him and thought-typed a short question. The reply came seconds later.

I’m sorry you’re having trouble with your mother. Can you describe the problem? —Devi