When I pull away, she looks as shiny-eyed and tight-cheeked from smiling as I feel, and I take her supple hands and remember them tenderly braiding my hair, and pulling mine, dripping, out of the pool.

“Aren’t you going to invite me into the manor and offer me a spot of tea?” She squeezes my palms.

“Quit saying spot, you nerd, or you’re going to make me break out before the retrospective,” I say, leading her into the house. “God, I’ve missed you. We need to talk.”

We’re cozied up on the sofa in the library, under two moth-eaten baby alpaca blankets (Basil always chose green, and Monty always chose petal pink), with cups of tea (made with ancient, dusty, possibly biohazardous tea bags), when unfailingly polite and kind Saxim finally alludes to the reason I called her here.

I’ve been avoiding the topic of the script, which winks at us both from a side table, choosing instead to fill her in on the sanitized, sitcom version of my life in America: how it took forever to wrangle the handle Thaïs, how I’m on my way to becoming a boss, how radically joyful romantic comedies are all I want to watch, how it’s not so much about curating a genuine feed as it is distilling your You-ness down into something super flavorful and digestible, how I want to hate Aunt Marion for being crotchety and judgmental and, yeah, secretly blowing money Dad left us on crystals and hypnosis classes, but so much of the hippie bullshit she says comes true (like celery being a power vegetable), and …

She sets her mug down on a side table, and a dust bunny launches itself onto her pristine white blouse. I swipe at it uselessly while she flinches it off. “I still can’t believe you found it in a single afternoon,” she whispers, tugging the fabric smooth. “It’s as if you called it into existence. Are you and Manon managing?” She turns toward the hall. “Where is she? I wouldn’t be able to let it out of my sight. What a shock—”

“It’s a goddamn miracle, Saxim. Mama left it for me.” I smile to myself, jaw aching.

Saxim watches me. “So, reading between the lines here … Manon hasn’t seen it.”

I meet her eyes and bark out a sparkling laugh. “I tried to contact her! She wouldn’t answer my calls! How was I supposed to stop myself from reading this?”

Her mouth wrinkles.

“It was Manon’s choice to abandon me here. I think I deserve a victory lap, don’t you?”

“A victory lap?” Saxim’s eyes darken.