But was she pretty? Was she popular?

“She was out of control. After she and some friends burned down a derelict cabin, she got off easy, in my opinion, when she was enrolled in a boarding school. I think they were really afraid that she would get pregnant out of wedlock like her real mother.”

Why does she hate you?

“Back then, if a girl accidentally got knocked up, her only option was to have the baby in secret while ostensibly visiting relatives in the Upper Peninsula. That’s how Helen was born. Our father didn’t even know she existed. He found out when she was around eight, and initiated contact. He didn’t intend to fall in love with my mother, Helen’s stepsister; it sort of happened. Can’t you imagine Helen lying awake in her dormitory and resenting me?”

Am I like her?

“I told Lily that she shouldn’t want to be. Helen was battling a lot of demons—I know that now, though I didn’t then. She was packed up and moved between our house and her adopted parents’ house like baggage. I suppose that the ordeal did turn her into a genius.”

This apologia was gratifying to Lily, who confessed she had been skipping class, smoking pot, allowing herself to be fondled by boys. “I was nauseous with jealousy, that Lily was fascinated by my narcissistic half sister but not me”—that she aspired to toss her innocence away in imitation. Helen was the chosen mother because she was distant, unknowable. Though isn’t everyone, in a sense?*

Utah brought a bed-and-breakfast run by Mormons, a matron with a forehead smooth from piety carrying towels upstairs. “I’m not sure about you,” she said, “but I don’t feel like I’ve arrived somewhere until I’ve had a wash.” In the morning, a kitchen with a bona fide family greeted them, cool scrambled eggs in a warm majolica bowl, bacon scalloped like a petticoat on a porcelain plate, toast with honey, toast with butter, toast with marmalade. The father drank coffee in a fatherly way. It was a rare lay indulgence. A couple girls around Lily’s age laid out place settings, methodically circling like the hands of a clock. As for Lily, she had draped a gossamer wrap around her head, in defiance of the heat. It wasn’t like her to take pains to hide her face. Reading comics, calm in the middle of the endearing storm of preparations, was why: a boy, tall, blond, fresh as a seraph in a fresco, his awareness limited to the nimbus of his own importance.

“When are you due on the road?” the father asked. The salt-of-the-earth wife chimed in to suggest a detour to the salt flats, if they weren’t in a hurry. They could spare an afternoon to be tour guides, pack a lunch, et cetera. With the family involved—i.e., the son—it was obvious that Lily was keen on the scheme, so Hannah consented, repeating a mantra that such acts of concession, like daily prayers, would win over her daughter.