Katriina tries to bring herself into focus and takes hold of the pancake pan. Another thing she’s able to do by rote: pour, turn, flip. She did grow up in a Finnish pancake house after all; she should be able to do this in her sleep. But Nicki is still staring at her questioningly, so she looks down and sees the pancake is burning. It has been one pancake this whole time, burning itself right into the pan.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, scraping the charred remnants from the bottom of the pan into the garbage. For a minute she considers telling Nicki about the miscarriage, but decides against it. Nicki is too preoccupied – with the impending Finn situation, with her mother, with her kids, with everything. Besides, Nicki shouldn’t know before Shawn, it’s just not right.

“Mom!” she hears one of her boys scream from the living room. “Mom! Ross won’t let me play with his Legos.”

“Ross, stop being such a little brat!” Nicki yells.

“It’s probably one of my boys’ fault,” Katriina says. Her head starts to throb, a tiny flash of light pulsing behind her right eyeball. “They’re probably just being grabby.” She finishes scraping the pan and runs it under the tap. “You have lots of toys!” she calls, forcing cheerfulness. She feels the elastic band digging into her arm and fights the urge to snap it.

“Mom! He’s stuffing the Legos in his pants so we can’t play with them!”

“Ross, that’s gross!” Nicki says.

Suddenly there is a scream from the other room, and Ross comes running into the kitchen crying, his face indented with Lego markings, little round pockmarks in his delicate skin. Katriina runs into the other room, grabs the nearest boy, and smacks him across the bum. Then all the kids are crying, and Katriina is yelling Finnish curse words that she didn’t even know she remembered, and when it’s over she locks herself in Nicki’s bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror as she snaps the elastic over and over again – be a better mother, be a better mother, be a better mother – until her wrist has gone completely numb.

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