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“No,” I say.

And it’s true. That’s the part that matters — it’s true. A photo dropped into my phone at first light with no words attached isn’t hearing from him. It’s him standing in someone else’s stands holding up someone else’s kid, aiming it at me like a flare he wants me to watch burn. That’s not my father reaching for me. That’s my father performing a life I’m not in. I don’t count it. And I don’t tell her about it, because there’s no way that photo lands on my mother without taking something out of her, and she’s got three minutes left and a floor full of people who need her worse than that photo needs airing.

“Good,” she says. Careful. “Okay. Good.” And I hear her choose to believe me — or choose not to push, which with the two of us has always been the same move.

“Go take care of your people, Ma.”

“Go stop pucks. I love you. Call me Sunday.”

“Love you. Sunday.”

She’s gone, and the car’s quiet again, and Beau’s found something fascinating out his window, giving me the specific privacy of a man pretending he didn’t hear a word of that.

The barn’s freezing and empty and mine for two hours. I lace up in the dark end of the room while Beau hauls himself one-armed up into the stands to heckle a man skating alone on a holiday.

And when I finally hit the ice — cold biting, blades cutting, the whole loud world dropping off to the simple honest job of standing in the gap — my head goes quiet.

For about a lap.

Then I think about the sound she made when I got it right, and the way she let me hold her after, and the black scrap of her living in my drawer four minutes across town from wherever she is right now. And I dig in harder, like I can outskate it.

I can’t. I already know I can’t.

I try anyway. Trying’s most of what I’ve got.

Chapter 3

Margo

The Sailmaker smells like fresh paint and other people’s decisions, which is what a house smells like after a kitchen fire and six weeks of a contractor named Gary having strong opinions about our backsplash.

I love it anyway. I love it so much my throat goes tight standing here in the front hall with a box of my winter things, and I’m not going to cry over drywall, so I don’t — I have a schedule for that too, probably.

It’s the first Sunday of the semester and we’re home, and that’s the part that gets me. The January light comes weak and silver through windows Gary’s guys apparently washed, and there’s a specific gravity to the three of us under one roof again. I didn’t know how much I needed it until the fire took it away and shoved me into Priya’s room for a month.

Three of us now. Sloane moved into Raven House with Beau over break, which I’m thrilled about, genuinely — and also not going to examine too closely, the small hollow it leaves in a house that used to be four. I’m allowed to be happy for her and miss her at the same time. My therapist says so; I’m working on believing her. Anyway, Sloane’s here today regardless, because Sloane Beckett would sooner die than let three people unpack a kitchen without her supervision. The Sailmaker is ours again. New stove, new drywall, the ghost of smoke finally gone from the curtains. Home.

“Do not,” Wren says, walking past me with a single duffel bag over one shoulder, “reorganize the pantry before I’ve finished my coffee.”

“I would never.”

“You did it in October. I found the beans in a jar labeled beans.”

“That’s called a system, and you’re welcome.”

She’s already gone up the stairs, unbothered, the way Wren does everything — one bag, twenty minutes, and her whole room will look like a hotel that’s never had a guest. She’s a marvel. I have four boxes, a garment bag, and a plastic tote of things I labeled with an actual label maker, and I regret none of it.

June’s on the stairs behind her with a box of books and a fern she’s kept alive against the wishes of God and New England, cardigan sleeves shoved up, glasses sliding. “The fern survived the dorms,” she reports, like a woman bringing news from a war. “Barely. He saw things.”

“He’s a survivor. Name him something dignified.”

“His name is Kevin.”

“Kevin the survivor. I stand corrected.”

And Sloane’s in the kitchen — of course she is, she found the one room that isn’t unpacked yet and started making it submit — pulling mugs out of a box and lining them on the new shelf. When I come in she doesn’t say a word about the fact that I’ve been avoiding a certain house across town for eight straight days. She just hands me a mug. Sloane’s whole language is the thing she doesn’t say, and lately she’s been saying a lot of it in my direction, and I love her and I’m dreading her in roughly equal measure.

“Tea’s on,” she says. “Gary left you a housewarming card. It’s very sincere.”