“Chocolate is always welcome,” Irene said. She took the box. “Ooh, very nice, thank you. It’s good to hear it went well. I’m curious about who our neighbors just past that portal are.”

“I’ve met them and I’m still not sure who they are,” I said. “I could tell you later.”

“At dinner, maybe,” she said, smiling. “How are you, Kenzie?”

“I’m good, thank you for asking,” Kenzie said. “Dinner smells amazing.”

“Which reminds me! Victoria, are you hungry? I’m trying to decide how much pasta and garlic bread to make.”

“I’m ravenous, actually. Errands took a while today and I didn’t get the chance to eat lunch.”

“Perfect.”

Kenzie spoke up. “I don’t eat a lot, and I’m pretty regular about not eating a lot. My mom got fed up with asking me because the answer was always the same—”

Kenzie’s hands squeezed her middle, pressing her shirt against it, showing how narrow she was. She looked at me, then saw the bags I was holding. “Oh! Put that down somewhere.”

“You can put things down in the corner of the living room,” Irene Martin said.

The living room was more a lavender than an eggplant, with dense white carpet and nice looking furniture. The lighter shade of the room worked with the way the light flowed into it. At one corner of the room, a tarp had been laid out. An easel was on the tarp, a wooden rack of paints set beside it.

A collection of gears and bits of glass were arranged on one half of the coffee table, on a newspaper. The paper, gears and glass were dusty.

“Mom’s art,” Kenzie said, indicating the easel. “She’s terrible at a lot of the artsy stuff until she gets practice in, and then she’s really talented.”

“That’s not nice to say, that I’m terrible,” Irene said, from behind us.

“It’s true, though! You’re really, really good at stuff when you learn it. You’re an amazing cook, you had some awesome stained glass art, before, I remember it. It was better than what you have in the windows now.”

“That was a long, long time ago,” Irene said. “I’m surprised you remember it.”

Kenzie nodded, energetic.

“I’m not a proper artist,” her mom said, as she looked past us to the painting. “I don’t have my own ideas, I spin off on other people’s. Besides, I have no patience to stick it out.”

The painting was in shades of indigo to midnight blues, three old women clawing at each other in efforts to reach for the sky, expressions contorted. It wasn’t complete, with one old woman with a shawl over her head left undone, face left as only a midnight blue oval, hands left similarly undefined.

“You painted that?”

“I was. It’s not done.”

“It’s really good.”