LOGIN(Elijah)"Signal.""I did signal.""You signaled while you were already moving. The signal goes first. That's the entire point of it.""Okay, fine."I put the indicator on for the next lane change about half a mile early.Dad doesn't say anything about that.He's had one hand resting on the emergency brake since we pulled out of the driveway, and he thinks I haven't noticed."Where are we going?""Straight. About forty minutes."He looks over.I keep my eyes exactly where they're supposed to be, which is the only reason I get away with it.He sits back and doesn't ask again.I've had this whole conversation planned since Tuesday. Actual sentences, in an order.I practiced them every chance I got, and now I've finally got him trapped in a car for forty minutes and I can’t remember what order they go in."How was work?""Fine."I can feel him looking at me suspiciously. I don’t usually ask him about work. That’s the kind of lame question old people ask."Cool."The conversation dies a n
(Julian)"You've been holding that same glass for an hour."The woman saying it has been circling since the lights came up in the screening room, and she's decided I'm the softest target left standing."It's a prop.""You're Sonia Morton's brother.""Stepbrother. And you've done your homework, which I'd find flattering if it was about me and not just an attempt to get to Sonia.""Introduce me to her.""No. Forty people have asked me that tonight, and I’m not in the business of selling access to family."She goes off to try somebody else.The party's for the latest film Sonia's in.She's over by the pillar with her back flat against it, because it's the one spot in the room where nobody can come at her from behind.A woman at the next table has turned her chair right around so she'll be in the background of the pictures people are taking of Sonia with their phones angled over their shoulders.Nobody here is thinking about the film. They want to stand near her for four minutes and then
(Gloria)"I'm not tired.""Nobody said anything about tired. I said it’s time for bed.""Those are the same.""They are not remotely the same."Diego is lying face down in the middle of the kitchen floor, which he’s been doing on and off for twenty minutes, for reasons he hasn't shared with the group.Nathaniel steps over him with the empty dinner plates."Up you get buddy, it’s bath time.""I can't. I'm on the floor.""I can see that. Which is an even better reason to get you cleaned up before bed.""I’m not tired.""That’s good, because you still have to bathe, and I’m going to read you a story, and then you have to be awake to think up all the things you need to do before I can turn out your light."Diego eyes him contemplatively.“I’ll think about the things here on the floor.”I laugh half second too late, and Nathanial's head swivels from Diego to me, missing nothing.He lets it go for the moment. Waiting for little ears to be asleep before he questions me.He drops the plates i
(Natasha)"She's not wearing the right shoes.""Of course she is, what are you talking about?""The list said black.""The list said black or brown. You've read that list eleven times, and I'm starting to worry about you. Is old age addling your mind prematurely?"Chase is in the hallway with his phone up, filming our daughter, who is on her fourth minute of the same piece of toast.He keeps recording while turning his head to frown at me for the old age jab."You labeled her socks," he says, like that’s a suitable rebuttal."The list said label everything.""It said label her belongings. Socks aren't going to walk off.""Socks are the first thing to walk off. The second kids take off their shoes they just toss them anywhere and can’t find them again. You probably rolled yours neatly."His ears turn pink, which means I absolutely hit the hammer on the nail there. It’s so adorable I want to kiss him, but we have to leave soon."Lily. Two more bites," I try to hurry her along, already k
(Natasha)"The chairs stay empty," Eleanor says, in the voice she uses on caterers and governments."Both of them. We wait.""They said noon," Chase says."Then they'll be here at noon. Photographer, you're being paid by the hour, look happier about it."The photographer, who has been rearranging us on the Warren Estate staircase for forty minutes, looks at the empty chairs and wisely says nothing.The gallery wall goes up the stairs beside us.Generations of Warrens in oil, sitting very still, not one of them smiling.Nobody in this portrait can manage either.Elias has claimed the center chair on the grounds of seniority and his cane."In my day," he announces, "A family portrait was four people and a dog.""You hated the dog," Eleanor says."The dog hated me. There's a difference. It still made the painting.""Where's the dog now?" Elijah asks."In the painting. Immortality was wasted on it."Elijah's on the step behind him, tugging at a collar Hannah has already fixed twice.Mason
(Chase)"You said one dance," I remind her, against her hair."I'm renegotiating.""You can't renegotiate mid-dance.""Watch me. Lily's asleep on your mother, and if I wake her to say goodbye she'll scream, and then I'll cry, and this makeup was applied by professionals.""So we just leave our daughter?""With her grandmother, who's always angling for more time with her. Don't look at me like that, it's one night."My mother is predictably delighted about keeping Lily for the night, and scandalized that we want to sneak off.She tells me to drive carefully, twice.We make it up the beach at a pace just under suspicious.Julian spots us and turns the music up to distract the others from our exit, because he misses nothing and tells no one.Then we’re in the car, speeding along the dark road, and my wife is sitting with her shoes off and her feet on the dash, eating cake off a napkin she stole on the way out."Is that my slice?" I ask."It's community property now. Keep up."My wife.I
(Natasha)I make an appointment.His assistant tries to offer me a slot next Thursday and I tell her I'll be there at eleven, which is when Chase has a gap in his schedule.I spent years working with him. I know he leaves himself breathing room before lunch meetings start.Time to gather his though
(Natasha)My mother makes tea at six in the morning because she doesn’t know what else to do.I sit at the kitchen island and watch her move through the townhouse, calm and efficient in a way that only makes her worry more obvious.She raised me to be stronger than this, and now she’s pretending no
(Nathanial)My mother has put flowers on every surface.It's a good instinct.Flowers fill space, give the eye somewhere to land, make a house feel inhabited rather than merely occupied.She’s thought carefully about this afternoon and it shows.What she hasn't thought about, or perhaps has thought
(Chase)The invitation arrives on a Wednesday, addressed to the entire household in handwriting I don't recognize.Sonia picks it up from the hall table before I do and I watch the color leave her face in real time."What is it?"She turns it over in her hands."My mother bought a house.""That's g







