What mother doesn’t love to cook with her little girl? Beneath that: And what little girl doesn’t love learning with Mom? Little bumps pocked the page all over, as if it had been out in the rain, and Lydia stroked them like Braille with her fingertip. She did not understand what they were until a tear splashed against the page. When she wiped it

how hard it would be to inherit their parents’ dreams. How suffocating to be so loved.

Her grand plan had lasted nine weeks. Everything she had dreamed for herself faded away, like fine mist on a breeze. She could not remember now why she thought it had all been possible.

On the stairs, Hannah holds her breath. She is afraid to move anything, even a fingertip. Maybe if she stays perfectly still, her parents will stop talking. She can hold the world motionless, and everything will be all right.

When I get to college— He never completed the sentence, but in his imagined future, he floated away, untethered.

No details to catch in the crevices of her mind.

She hugged her knees and sent soft and patient thoughts, but her sister did not hear them.

(What about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom in the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed—as when Marilyn, laying four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if

It had suffused them so deeply it could never wash out.