With the back of his hand, Walter rubs at his left eye. For a moment he reminds her of a little kid, confused and scared. “Well, I saw Kate on the news,” he says. “I figured it was the kind of thing I should come back early for.”

Katriina feels her face turning red. While she stands there wishing the ground would open up and swallow her, Shawn comes up behind her and nods at Walter.

“Have you been to see her?” he asks.

Walter returns the nod. “Just got back,” he says, bending down to the ground and running his hand through the grass. Tommy and Petey both bend down next to him, examining the ground as if they know what they are looking at. It’s uncanny, Katriina thinks. The way they mimic him. You’d never guess that they weren’t related at all.

“How is she?” she asks.

Walter shrugs. “The same, I guess.” He grabs a handful of brownish grass and rips it up, opening his palm to show the boys. “Pythium blight,” he says. “Poor water drainage.” Overturning his hand, he lets the grass blow away.

“Are you coming inside?” Shawn asks. “We’ve got steaks.”

“Lawn’s not going to de-thatch itself,” Walter says.

“Well, no,” says Shawn, “but you’ve got to eat, right?” He grabs the nearest boy, Tommy, and pulls him towards the house in a headlock, the grocery bags falling to the ground. Petey runs after them, egging on his father as he rubs his knuckles into Tommy’s head.

Katriina sighs. It’s like Shawn has something to prove every time he’s around Walter, like he needs to show him what a great father he is, how much fun he is, how much the boys love him. It’s moments like this, when they’re around his family, that her love for Shawn is the strongest – she suddenly feels so fiercely protective of him, as though she can make up for everything else that has gone wrong in his life.

Or at least she can pick up the groceries he’s dropped. If she doesn’t, who will?

—

Sometimes Katriina wonders if her life is made up of just a few choreographies that she plays out over and over again. For tonight’s performance of In the Kitchen with Nicki, while Nicki prepares the marinade for the steaks, Katriina makes spaghetti and meatballs for the kids, none of whom will eat a steak except for Ross. It sounds complicated, but the spaghetti is from a box, the sauce from a jar, the meatballs from the freezer. The girls sit at the table, all three of them with their phones out; Hamish and Shawn have the boys out in the backyard playing soccer; Walter is presumably still out de-thatching the lawn. There has been no sign of Finn yet. Nicki tells Katriina she has been asleep all afternoon.