Finn sits down at the table opposite her. The house is so quiet, but it’s a different kind of quiet than she’s used to. It’s the quiet that six sleeping people make, the house heaving with their breath, the air vibrating with their fluttering eyelids. “Did you know that Dallas is back in town?” she asks.

Nicki stops chewing and holds her body motionless, her eyes unblinking. Finn has never seen her sit so still. “No,” she says after several seconds. “Is he the one who punched you?”

“No. That was his girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Nicki sticks her finger back in her mouth.

Finn has to stop herself from warning Nicki about how much dangerous bacteria there is on a human hand. All their lives she has been warning Nicki about the perils of everything, from not flossing to texting while driving to marrying a man she has only known for six weeks, none of which Nicki has ever heeded. So what’s the point?

They sit together for a few minutes, there at the kitchen table, not speaking. Nicki flicks at the edge of her magazine. Then, wiping her nail on the front of her shirt, she gets up and opens the fridge. “There’s some leftover spaghetti if you want it. Just don’t expect me to heat it up for you or anything.”

“Thanks.”

Nicki keeps staring into the open fridge, as though the meaning of life is hiding there behind the carton of almost-expired milk. “Is she pretty?” she asks, her back still to Finn.

Finn thinks about it. “Yeah,” she says, finally. “But she can’t throw a punch.”

“You can’t, either.”

“That’s true.”

More silence. The cold air from the open fridge reaches Finn, a welcoming sensation in the stifling heat of the kitchen. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get to sleep tonight, buried beneath piles of blankets in the stuffy sunroom, the morning sunrise beating through the windows, turning it into an oven. But her old room has twin girls sleeping in it these days, sharing wordless secrets across the gap between their beds. She wonders if this abundance is what her parents were hoping for when they bought a four-bedroom house – full of kids and grandkids, Parkers spilling out of every room, beautiful chaos between the walls, happy messes covering the floor.

“Nicki?” she says. “Did Mom ever talk to you about…wanting to –”

“Are you asking me if Mom tried to kill herself?” Nicki says into the fridge.

“I guess, yeah. It’s just, I mean…” Finn is having trouble finding the words. Or maybe she just can’t bring herself to ask questions she doesn’t want to know the answers to. “Why else would she do something like this?”

“I don’t know. Because she’s Mom? Because that’s what she does?”

“It’s not, though.” Finn pauses. “Is it?”