You would think it would fall on Afton, as the oldest, to be the caretaker of our younger sibling. But Afton made it clear from the very first day Mom and Pop brought Abby home from the hospital that she was not remotely interested in childcare, whereas I was super excited to hold the new baby and feed her and help change her diapers. And those roles just kind of stuck.

“Okay,” I mumble sleepily, because Mom is clearly talking to me.

“Don’t charge things to the room,” she reminds me. Mom likes to keep the room charges for business expenses only, which is a pain. Instead she lays a hundred-dollar bill on my nightstand, her standard allowance to cover my and Abby’s expenses for the day. Then she goes out the door of our room, leaving the door to the other room open so we can access Abby’s luggage.

Abby trundles onto my bed and curls up beside me, so warm that I quickly become too hot, but I don’t move her. She’s quiet for a few minutes, snuggling, but then she decides that she wants to watch cartoons. And then she decides she’s hungry. She bounces around making so much noise there isn’t really a choice but to get up. She even drags Afton out of bed. Eventually we all get dressed and wander down to the outdoor café on the ground floor, where Afton and I discover the joys of Kona coffee, feed muffin crumbs to the crowd of tiny birds that’s zipping in and out of the patio area, and watch the hotel guests run to catch the tram.

The entire time we’re eating I’m biting back the words Where were you? because it really is a mystery to me, what Afton could have been doing out so late, but to ask her would put me back into the fucking square category. So I don’t ask. And she doesn’t enlighten me.

“What should we do today?” I say instead, and dig around in my bag until I find the brochure with the hotel activities listed on it. I slide it across the table to Abby. I’m thinking something quiet and physical, some way to get a little exercise after the whole day of sitting and eating we had yesterday. Something preferably without much in the way of walking along beaches or swimming in pools.

Like paddleboarding. This single activity refuses to leave my brain. Paddleboarding. That’s when I’m going to truly feel better about everything.

“I want to do that.” Abby puts a tiny finger down on the brochure and then lifts it again so I can see what she’s referring to: a picture of a young Hawaiian woman hula dancing in front of a group of older ladies.

My first mistake, I realize immediately, was asking the five-year-old what we should do.