Dinner with Ivy's parents that weekend felt, for the first time in longer than Ivy could remember, entirely unremarkable, her father grilling in the small backyard of the house he and her mother had finally, cautiously started renting again, her mother directing from a lawn chair with the same stubborn insistence on supervising that had governed the move weeks earlier.

"You're glowing," her mother said, catching Ivy alone in the kitchen while Sterling and her father debated the merits of charcoal versus gas with the particular intensity of two men who barely knew each other yet but had decided grilling was safe, neutral territory. "New job glowing, or something else...