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She could hear the real estate agent start their way from the other room, then stop. Probably she’d decided it wasn’t worth it to tell them they were unlikely to find any house in the area with a fireplace large enough for an entire cow. Leo said, innocently, “Are we the actual size of a cow when we’re in our doubles cow costume? We might be able to go a little smaller.”

She said, her poker face stone, “Might be time for a new double cow costume, ours is starting to smell a little like old milk. Maybe we should go horse?”

She hadn’t even been that funny and she knew it, but Leo broke anyway. Shoulders heaving, tears welling as he snorted a laugh that actually sounded very much like a horse. She smirked, even more smug now, and led him upstairs. Behind them, she heard the real estate agent greet another couple; the relief in her voice was audible from here.

Though the agent wasn’t there to listen, Shira kept the game going in the primary bedroom. “I was really hoping for one of those bathtub-in-the-middle-of-the-room situations,” she said, mock frowning as she paced around the (king-size, she noted for their comparison file) bed. “Though I guess you only really find those in old buildings in New York City.”

“Maybe we should scratch the house hunt and buy one of them,” Leo said. “For you, at least.” He gave her what felt like an overly long look, or maybe she was just imagining it because she was still feeling all tender and vulnerable after thinking about him as a father. “Have you thought about moving back? You know, since you’re not working in the art world anymore?”

Shira sighed. Ever since Talia had raised the subject last year, it was like her family had decided together to put on the pressure. Her parents had been relentless with the guilt trips, reminding her how old they were getting, and Talia had been subjecting her to random, poorly punctuated, weirdly religious threats (e.g., move back or ill instruct hashem to put you in the book of death on yk). “I’ve been thinking about it, but it’s a big decision. I’ve lived in LA my entire adult life. It’s not easy to just abandon that and move across the country.”

“I get it,” Leo said, even though how could he possibly, considering he’d—oh. He actually had been in a similar situation, in high school, when he’d abandoned his entire life in New Jersey to move to Michigan with his mom. And then again, when he’d left Michigan and moved back here. He took a seat on the edge of the king bed. Shira winced, having to physically stop herself from yelling no outside clothes on the sheets. “It’s a hard decision. But I can tell you that, at least for me, it was a relief to make it and to be done with it. Once my mom left Michigan and my friends graduated and moved around the country, I didn’t have much left there that I couldn’t have here.”

That made sense. Shira had her synagogue community that she loved, but being fully honest, she wasn’t so close to them there that she felt she couldn’t leave them. She’d miss them, but she could be just as happy with another synagogue community. She had her residency coming up, but that was temporary. And while she’d made friends out there since the blowup with Danica and Ellery and Nora, they weren’t as close. Sometimes, at night, when she closed her eyes, she could admit to herself that she purposely kept any new friends at a bit of a remove because she was so afraid of it happening again.

But that wasn’t healthy, was it? It was like those people who got a divorce and never let themselves fall in love again. She should go out there. She should let herself get close to people. And it would be really, really nice to be near her family once more, if only to stop her mom calling her to tell her that she had another strange ache in her side and it was probably cancer or something equally as horrible. “I’m going to do it,” said Shira, and just like that, she could breathe a little easier. “I’m going to move back.”

“Yeah!” Leo touched her on the shoulder in a gesture between a clap and a pat. The force of it, the touch of his palm, sent a zing through her arm. Energized, she clapped her hands together.

“But you have to find me an apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Leo said confidently. “And now that I know how to do a lot of this house stuff, if I have to, I can install one. So that you can bathe while your boyfriend cooks.”

Boyfriend. Why did he say it like that? “He’ll have to be careful not to mix the pasta water with the bathwater,” she said, eyeing Leo carefully. “I wouldn’t like that. I bet Emily wouldn’t, either.”

It was the stupidest way possible to slip Emily’s name into the conversation, and Shira immediately felt like an idiot. But she had to know.

Leo let out a delicate cough. “Emily and I actually broke up,” he said. “A few weeks ago.” He was ducking his head, so Shira couldn’t read anything in his face, or his tone, which was decidedly neutral. “So she won’t feel any type of way about it.”

She wanted so badly to barrage him with questions. Who broke up with who? Why did you break up? How are you feeling about it? But only that last one seemed appropriate to ask, so that’s what she did. “Are you okay?”

He shrugged. “I’m fine.” Of course he would say that—he was such a guy. Footsteps sounded up the stairs, and Leo turned at the noise, his face slackening with what appeared to be relief. When he spoke, his voice was back to its previous game-playing heartiness. “I think this bedroom is smaller than the primary in my dad’s house, but it’s hard to tell without checking. I should’ve brought my tape measure.”

Damn it. Back to business. “I think there’s an app you can use to measure somehow with your phone,” Shira offered, but Leo was already walking out of the room. She went to follow but was stopped trying to get around the other couple; by the time they’d finished their awkward step dance, Leo was somewhere else in the house, the attic, maybe, or the basement. She couldn’t know.

Their drive to the next house was silent, aside from the occasional assessment of how similar that house had been to Leo’s dad’s. Shira spent most of the ride turning over every possible scenario for Leo and Emily’s breakup in her head, trying to read into the tiniest of things. Leo must have been the one to do it, because otherwise why would Emily have posted a happy photo of the two of them only a week or two before they broke up? But he doesn’t want to talk about it, and doesn’t that mean that it probably hurts?

“I wonder what it’ll sell for,” Leo mused about the house, putting on his turn signal so he could coast to a spot on the curb and pulling her back to the present. He’d driven exactly the speed limit all the way here. “My guess is not as much as my dad’s, with less usable space in the house and older bathrooms. But we’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” echoed Shira.

The next house was definitively nicer than Leo’s dad’s, with two more bedrooms and an extra bathroom and a really high-end kitchen, everything shiny chrome and gleaming granite. “This one will definitely go for more than my dad’s,” he said, scrolling through some of the photos on his phone, holding it up so she could see. “But it’s still a good data point. Not every single house we see can be an exact comp.”

“Right. Of course,” Shira said. “It’s not like we’re going to find an exact copy of your dad’s house up for sale.” Except maybe in their own neighborhood, where the houses seemed to have one of four different blueprints. But none of the houses in their neighborhood had recently sold.

This time, as they greeted the real estate agent, Shira smiled at her and tipped her head in Leo’s direction, as if in fond exasperation. Something about the gesture felt freer, knowing that he was single. She wasn’t worrying about accidentally going a bit too far and stepping on someone else’s territory. “I don’t think we need the extra bedroom and bathroom, but he wanted to take a look anyway,” she said. “It’s two more bedrooms than we need, really. But thinking about resale value, what do you think those two extra bedrooms and that extra bathroom add to the value of the home?”

The real estate agent’s eyes lit up as he began rambling about added value, home offices, blah blah blah, basically trying to convince them that more space equaled better. Shira nodded along, hoping Leo was gaining something of value from this speech, and letting her mind drift. Maybe she and Fake Husband Leo would need home offices, Leo to work on his games between houses and Shira to work remotely at least a few days a week. That would leave room for kids. One, two, even three if two shared a room. Kids could share rooms and be fine. Sure, she’d never shared a room with Talia, and that was probably good because they might have killed each other, but Talia was a rare breed. Surely she wouldn’t birth a Talia.

“Thanks,” Leo finally said, cutting off the agent. “We’ll keep that in mind. I’m just not sure if we can afford the extra space right now.”

“Well, of course it doesn’t hurt to look,” said the agent.

“Of course,” said Leo. “Come on, dear. Let’s take a look at the upstairs.”

They trooped upstairs, the sleek wooden staircase washed in light from an opening up above. The bedrooms were spacious, the bathrooms redone without being too modern and sterile. Shira opened the closet in one of the kids’ rooms to find dolls shoved into shelves, little dresses dangling over tiny sparkly shoes. She closed it, something sticking in her throat. “This house is really nice, but I don’t know if it’s me,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” Leo said, still in character. “Tell me, what would please the missus?”