“Okay,” she said. “I’d like to invite your sister to a sit-down.”

My dignity and grace were dashed away, just like that. A startling, painful jar from reality to somewhere else. The lights of the brightly lit legal office seemed too bright and the dark shadows and the dimly lit building interior of the Wardens HQ and its lobby seemed too dark.

It was very, very hard, in the moment, to separate my recollection of being outside the house with her inside that house, from this, and to convince myself that she wasn’t here, somewhere nearby.

“Nah,” I said. My voice too soft.

“Victoria—”

“Mom,” I said, my voice sharp. “Do you want this conversation to go in the same direction as the one at the barbecue?”

“That’s up to you,” she said.

I thought about saying something regrettable.

“Bye Mom. Good luck with your thing.”

She looked like she might say something, but she smiled instead, and said, “Good luck with yours.”

I turned to go, and the others followed.

We walked a little way around the circumference of the floor, between the offices to our right and the railing to our left, until we were a distance away from the legal department. I leaned on the railing, and wrapped one of my hands around the other, squeezing it.

Sveta put an arm around me, and then Kenzie walked up to the other side of me and put a hand on my back.

“I’m okay,” I said.

There wasn’t an immediate response.

“She was never my favorite person,” Sveta said.

“You seemed to get along with her before.”

Sveta shook her head, hair flying out a little ways. “You were always really down when she was due to visit, and you were down when she missed visits. And you were down after she came.”

“I was down all the time.”

“It was different kinds.”

“Family’s hard,” Tristan said. “It really sucks sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said. “Family can be the best and it can be the worst.”

Sveta let her arm slide off my shoulder. It settled on Kenzie’s head with a faint clack.

“Ow,” Kenzie said.

Sveta’s fingers lifted up, then came down, in a pat.

I stood straighter, and Sveta moved a bit away, her arm reeling in, giving me freedom to stand back. “Hopefully this gets you guys one step closer to being a team with everything you need. We should go talk to Foresight and see if we can get you the rest of the way.”

“What’re we talking about with Foresight?”

“Jurisdiction,” I said. “There might be a few other pieces of ground to cover, finances, selling info.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “You up to talking about the kind of info you can gather, Kenz?”

“I think so.”