“You don’t really want to do that, do you?” she asked. What she really meant, of course, was, You’re not capable of doing that anymore. Finn didn’t want to hurt her mother, but she didn’t want to humiliate her either.

But Kate insisted. “It’s something we used to do, right?” she’d asked, her eyes wide and guileless, and Finn realized the window of time for playing Scrabble with her mother was rapidly closing.

“Yes, Mom, you’re right.”

And so they pulled out the old board and set it up in the kitchen, the way they used to. They counted out the tiles.

Finn started off with frog. Kate stared at her tiles, then stared at the board, then stared at her tiles again. While Finn waited, she wondered if Kate would remember how she used to make up words: daker, farden, pizzi. Sluba. If she plays a nonsense word now, will it be on purpose? Probably not.

“Aha!” said Kate finally. She put down her tiles: frog.

Finn gave a short laugh. “Good word, Mom,” she said.

Now, Finn pours water into the kettle, pulls a tea bag out of the canister on the counter, and drops it in the brown Betty – the same pot that her mother has used for as long as Finn can remember. She never even washed it, just rinsed it out. “There’s residue in there from a thousand cups of tea and a thousand conversations,” she would always say. Long before her mother started losing her memory, she was already obsessed with holding on to the past.

As Finn is pulling down two teacups from the cupboard, London comes into the kitchen. “Hey, Aunt F,” she whispers. “Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” says Finn. They both glance over at Kate, who is still engrossed with her tiles.

“I just…” London leans against the counter. She pulls on a lock of her hair, wrapping it around and around her finger. There are more colours in her hair now, blue and purple as well as the pink. “I feel like…” The lock of hair goes in her mouth.

Finn reaches up and brushes it away. “Say what you have to say, honey.”

London glances towards Kate. “She’s worse, isn’t she?”

Finn considers lying. It would be the kind thing. But she doesn’t want to keep things from London anymore. “Yes. She is worse.”

Her hair now off limits, London starts chewing on her nail. “Is it because…of the Duluth thing?” She pauses. “Is she worse because of me? Did I do this to her?”