“Don’t you remember? We went with black to keep with your antique, tropics-at-night vision, but I was thinking we should have gone charcoal. Yes, I’m going to swap to charcoal if they won’t penalize us. It will better contrast with the deep-green vases.”

“We went with deep-green vases?”

“Joey,” boomed Scott, rising. “Can I talk to you a moment?”

“Sure, Dad.” Joey stood in a restrained fashion so as not to underscore her gratitude at escaping. She trailed her father down the hall that led to his study. It was the hall with the light always on the fritz, that displayed old pictures of the girls. Joey was on the right side, Lily the left.

From a cross-hallway comparison, you could discern two things. First, that photography had really advanced in the new millennium. Joey’s pictures were uniformly characterized by a white fade-out at the edges, like a smoke machine on its last fumes. Lily’s were crisp and ethereal, like she was living in a fairyland.

The second thing you could tell was that Lily had confidence. Gravitas. Moxie. Lily age five—you would listen when she commanded you to bring her apple juice. Lily age eight—you might follow her to the moon. Joey just looked kind and sincere, like a girl with the simplest internal life. Like a girl you could read through her eyes and bouncy pigtails. She liked glitter and dancing and sunflowers.

In actuality, Joey had liked rummaging in the dirt for earthworms far more than glitter and dancing. And now she hated sunflowers. She looked into little Joey’s eyes, age eight—clad in a frilly white dress Bea had cajoled her to don, clasping a bunch of daisies and smiling. Joey was relieved when the hallway dead-ended at her father’s study.

She sat on the beige leather chair across from her father. How many times had she flopped down here in various states of excitement and unrest? In high school, to show off her latest artwork. Later, to exchange stories from the trenches of their mutual estate planning career. The man with the trust providing a life of luxury for his dog. The lady with the trust to dispose of her hundred-thousand-dollar handbag collection.

A Post-it hung on the windowpane. Joey squinted to see that, written in her dad’s neat script, it read, The only thing today requires of you is a smile.

“Who’s that quote by?” she asked.

“Oh.” He pressed a thumb along the Post-it’s top sticky part.

“One of yours?” She knew he alternated sources for his motivational Post-its. His idol Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Edison. Sometimes Scott Abrams.

Her father blushed. He opened a drawer, pulled out the pocket brush from which he was never far, and brushed his sandy-blond hair into its signature side sweep.