fanfiction.lol^{fun, silly, low-stakes fandom}

Chapter Text

The porch light came on behind them while Ethan was still trying to get Tyler's hand off the back of his neck.

"Keep walking," Tyler said, steering him another step down the path.

"I am walking. You're making it weird."

Tyler let go only to catch the shoulder of Ethan's shirt. Ethan turned beneath his arm, shoved him sideways with both hands, and nearly walked into Sophie, who'd stopped at the gate to wait for Hannah. She caught his elbow without looking particularly surprised.

"Road," she said.

He checked before stepping off the curb. A car passed slowly, its headlights moving over their legs, and Ryan lifted a hand toward the driver as if the twelve minutes he'd spent indoors had made him responsible for the entire street. Ethan waited beside Sophie until it passed. Across the road, somebody had left a sprinkler running. Water ticked against the same stretch of fence, withdrew, and came back.

He could still hear the front door closing. He didn't turn again. Maddie had been smiling when he left, Rose beside her, Kit reaching for the light; the house hadn't become a place he needed to keep checking from outside. Tyler stepped onto the pavement next to him and stretched his arms over his head.

"You still run?" Marcus asked Ethan.

"Yeah."

"How much?"

"Depends."

Ryan came back toward them. "You know he's just gonna keep saying 'depends,' right?"

"Depends how badly you want to lose," Ethan said.

Marcus smiled. Ryan pointed at him, already delighted by a contest nobody had started, while Noah bent to retie a shoe on the low wall beside the pavement. Natalie told him to do both. He ignored her until the other lace came loose under his hand.

"Fine," he said.

Emily took the opportunity to borrow his shoulder while checking the sole of her own shoe. Katie stood with Connor farther along the wall, both looking toward the strip of trees beyond the next houses. Hannah had tucked the small light Tyler gave her into her pocket. She removed it, tried the switch, and put it back with the lens facing down.

"Don't start without me!"

The voice reached them from the next corner. Ethan turned. Lucia was coming quickly along the sidewalk with a canvas bag knocking against her hip, one hand holding its strap and the other already raised. She'd changed out of whatever she'd worn at work; her shirt was plain, her hair pulled back, and she was walking too fast to pretend she hadn't been worried they'd leave.

"Lucia!"

He went to meet her. She dropped the bag at her feet just before he reached her and wrapped both arms around him, hard enough that his next breath became a laugh against her shoulder. He hugged her back and felt her squeeze again before she let him straighten.

"Jesus, you're actually here!" Lucia said, laughing into his shoulder.

"You sound surprised."

"You moved across the country. I'm allowed to be surprised." She pulled back, caught him by both shoulders, and looked him over. "Hold on. Let me look at you."

"I've been here the whole time."

"For about eight seconds. Shut up." She hugged him again, shorter this time, and let him go. "God, I've missed you."

"Missed you too." He nodded at the bag she'd abandoned on the pavement. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Work ran late. I thought you guys were gonna start without me." She looked past him. "You waited?"

"We were arguing," Sophie said.

"So, a normal Friday." Lucia scooped up her bag.

Hannah came to hug her too. Lucia bent into it willingly and said something beside her ear that made Hannah smile before protesting aloud that she hadn't grown that much. Tyler greeted Lucia over both their heads. She reached around Hannah to push his arm away from her hair.

Ethan picked up the bag. "Want this back at the house?"

"Could you? It's got my work stuff in it."

"Yeah."

He carried it up the short path, opened the door far enough to put it beside the hall wall, and told Kit whose it was. Kit nodded from inside. Ethan was back at the gate before Lucia had finished apologizing to Natalie for missing something in the messages.

"There," he said.

"Thank you." Lucia turned toward him again. "I've got about a hundred questions."

"Now?"

"No. After I've had a chance to sit down." She glanced toward Ryan. "Apparently we're running first."

"He hasn't stopped talking about it."

Ryan flipped him off without even pausing his conversation with Marcus. Lucia laughed and nudged Ethan's arm. He nudged hers back. That was enough for now; she was here, and he wasn't leaving in the next hour. He wanted to hear about work, about how she'd managed the weekend, about ordinary things that didn't fit inside a hug.

Connor called her name and shifted aside on the wall. Katie asked whether she'd eaten. Lucia said yes, then accepted half the wrapped snack Katie took from a pocket anyway. While they talked, Ethan leaned against the gate beside Sophie. Her shoulder brushed his.

"Everybody," she said quietly, looking along the pavement.

"Yeah."

"We'll be trying this for six weeks next time."

"Don't say that."

"I spent three days finding an evening."

"I saw the messages."

"You sent a thumbs-up."

"I agreed."

She turned her face toward him. He smiled before she could finish the look and pressed his shoulder more firmly against hers. She stayed there while Emily asked whether he'd started classes again yet. Ethan said not yet, and she made a noise of genuine envy.

"I had reading before I'd even found the room," she said.

"You found the room?" Connor asked from the wall.

"Eventually."

"I went to the wrong floor."

Katie turned toward him. "You told me the building was wrong."

"It was also the wrong floor."

Ethan laughed. "Did you stay?"

"For about two minutes. Everybody looked like they knew each other."

"Didn't help?"

"No. Then somebody put something on the screen and I realized."

Emily was laughing now too. Natalie asked whether he'd missed much, and Connor said only the first part. She didn't pursue it. Ethan liked that; sometimes an unfortunate first morning was just an unfortunate first morning, not something they had to fix for him while standing outside a house.

Sophie asked about Ethan's fall schedule. He started to answer, then lost his place when Ryan said something over him to Tyler.

"Sorry. What?" she asked.

"I said I've still got to sort out which days I'm doing everything."

"Same." She looked toward the street. "I keep thinking there's another week."

"Yeah."

"I'm not ready to pack again."

He leaned his head briefly against hers. She pressed back, then straightened when Emily asked whether anyone wanted to leave their phones in the house. Nobody did. Connor patted three pockets before finding his in the fourth, and Katie held out her hand as though she'd known exactly where it would be.

"Why are you asking?" Noah said to Emily.

"Because my pockets are stupid."

Sophie offered her a deeper one. Emily tested the opening with two fingers, considered the practical disadvantage of leaving her phone with somebody who might run in the opposite direction, and decided her own would do. Ethan watched her tuck it farther down and smooth the fabric over it. They were preparing to scatter across half their childhood while discussing clothing that couldn't hold a rectangle.

Hannah came between them to ask whether anybody had actually chosen teams.

"No," Ethan said.

"Then why are we standing here?"

"Because Lucia just got here."

"I know. Hi, Lucia!"

Lucia lifted the snack in acknowledgment. Ryan came toward them with both hands extended, apparently hoping a gesture would quiet eleven other people when his voice hadn't managed it.

"Okay. Who wants to seek?"

"Not me," Connor said immediately.

Katie laughed. Noah finished with his shoes and stood. Emily moved off his shoulder without thanking him, though she brushed some loose grit from the back of his shirt before walking toward Sophie.

"I'll seek," Marcus said.

"Me too," Natalie added.

Ryan counted them on his fingers. Tyler joined their side of the pavement, then pointed at Ethan.

"Come on."

"I'm hiding."

"You always hide."

"Because I'm good at it."

Tyler looked toward Sophie for support. She moved closer to Ethan instead. Hannah promptly joined them, taking a place that didn't require anybody to move for her, and lifted her chin toward her older brother.

"You can catch me."

"Oh, can I?"

"You can try."

Ethan laughed and gave her a quick sideways squeeze. She bumped her elbow into him rather than moving away. Lucia finished her snack, folded the wrapper down to almost nothing, and tucked it into her pocket.

"I'll seek. I've only just got here. I want to see people."

"You'll see us disappearing," Katie told her.

"Hopefully not for very long."

Ryan counted again. Himself, Marcus, Natalie, Tyler, Lucia. Ethan watched his hand stop at five, then looked along their own side: Sophie, Katie, Noah, Connor, Emily, Hannah, himself. Seven. Noah said it aloud before Ryan could announce anything else.

"Seven and five."

"We need one more," Marcus said.

"Not me," Hannah answered, immediately enough that everyone looked at her.

"Nobody said you."

She glanced along the hiders anyway. Ethan could see her revisiting the choice she'd made indoors, not wanting it quietly decided for her because the arithmetic had changed. Katie sat on the wall with her feet planted and offered no sign of volunteering.

Emily unlinked her arm from Sophie's. "Fine. I'll catch you."

"You can try," Sophie said.

"Everybody's saying that tonight." Emily crossed to Natalie and looked back at the hiders. "Now there's six."

"Six each," Natalie confirmed. "We'd give hiding the extra if we had an odd number. We don't."

Ethan nodded when she looked his way. Hannah stayed beside him, pleased without making a ceremony of getting what she'd wanted. Emily nudged Ryan farther toward the gatepost so everybody could see both teams at once.

Ryan counted one last time, despite being able to see six fingers raised on Natalie's hands. "Okay."

"Finally," Connor said, abandoning the moth he'd been watching beneath the streetlight.

"Forty-five seconds," Marcus said.

"From here?" Sophie asked.

Ryan pointed at the gatepost. "Here."

"Not from wherever you start walking while you count," Emily added.

Ryan accepted that with a reluctant smile. Ethan remembered the particular game she meant: Ryan facing a wall, still counting very loudly, somehow following them half a block before reaching thirty. Ethan had doubled back past him then. It had been funny enough that nobody had gotten much hiding done.

"Stay here," Lucia told Ryan, standing beside the post. "I'm not chasing you before we start."

He leaned against it. "Happy?"

"Quite."

A bicycle came along the sidewalk and broke the group into two smaller pieces. They moved aside without argument. Ethan recognized the rider only after he'd passed; he called hello, got a lifted hand in return, and listened to the wheels hum away toward the corner. Behind the houses, the trees were losing their last differences of color. The evening had gone blue without Ethan noticing the exact moment.

Natalie turned her phone screen down. "Boundaries. Before everybody goes."

"Same ones," Connor said.

"Say them anyway."

He made a little impatient movement with one hand, then stopped when Katie looked at him. Ethan turned toward the north, where he could picture the rise toward Quarry Park even though houses and trees hid it from here. He'd once known the whole game by what he could reach before somebody shouted his name; the edges were farther apart now, but they still had to be edges.

"Quarry Park and the tunnel end north," Marcus said. "Not through the tunnel. Not up on anything."

"Peat Meadow and Home Depot south," Tyler added.

"Toward the river west, Not down to the water," Natalie said. "Saltonstall to the east."

Ethan nodded. Streets, the familiar paths, woods between them. Nothing locked, nothing broken they had to climb inside, no changing a limit because somebody was close enough to catch them. Katie pointed back toward the crossing they sometimes used farther along the route.

"If the gates are down, you wait. No trying to beat them."

"I wasn't going to," Connor said.

"I'm saying it to everybody."

"Okay."

Ryan lifted both hands. "Also stop for cars. Obviously."

"Stop means stop," Marcus said, less loudly. "If somebody needs you, don't make them prove it."

Ethan watched Hannah listen. She wasn't pretending indifference; her eyes followed each person, then went toward the corner she wanted to use. She knew the neighborhood, knew much of the game, and was still paying attention because tonight she meant to do well at it.

"Tagging," Lucia said. "Hand. Not dragging people down."

Tyler put a hand on Ethan's shoulder, apparently unable to resist the available example. Ethan knocked it away.

"Doesn't count yet."

"I know."

"Then stop."

Tyler grinned and stepped back. Ethan was still smiling when he turned toward the others, but he heard Marcus agree with Lucia. Nobody needed a tackle to settle whether an arm had been touched. They'd all had enough bruised knees when they were younger.

"And when you're caught, you seek," Sophie said. "But you don't tell."

"Current hiding spots," Natalie clarified. "You don't give anybody a map of where you just left people."

Connor nodded, his interest returning now that rules involved something he might try. Katie watched him long enough that he rolled his eyes, laughing, and promised without being asked again.

Ethan looked across at Tyler. His brother knew too many of his routes already. Ethan knew Tyler's, which was less useful while Tyler was a seeker but satisfying enough to contemplate. Neither needed help from somebody who'd been hiding with him two minutes earlier.

"What about trees?" Hannah asked.

"Still in," Katie said.

"Of course you'd say that."

Katie swung a heel against the wall. "They are."

"If you can reach somebody, you can tag them," Marcus said. "If you can't, back off and let them out."

"Twenty feet," Natalie added.

"And then they have to actually come out," Ryan said. "Not stay there until breakfast."

Hannah looked toward Ethan. He felt the question before she asked it and answered with a small shake of his head. Not a promise to leave his own spot unused; only a refusal to discuss it in front of six people who might soon be looking for him. She made an exaggeratedly dissatisfied face, then returned to Katie's explanation of how far twenty feet was meant to be.

They weren't measuring it with a tape. They never had. Far enough for a person to step out, regain their feet, choose a direction; close enough that reaching a difficult place didn't end the game. No standing at the opening with a hand waiting. No hopping straight back inside over and over. Ethan liked the moment after a seeker withdrew almost as much as he liked escaping in the first place. Somebody would have to choose badly, and it didn't always have to be him.

Noah took off his glasses, wiped them on the hem of his shirt, and put them back. Natalie waited until he could see her before asking whether he'd heard the last part.

"Yes."

"You were looking at your shoe."

"My ears weren't."

She gave him a look and left it there. Emily nudged Sophie, who nudged Ethan, and he found himself laughing at a conversation he'd heard in different forms for years. Noah smiled reluctantly when he saw them watching. He wasn't as untouched by any of this as he wanted to appear.

Connor asked Katie whether she was going left. She answered too quietly for the seekers to hear. Ethan saw Ryan lean forward and put a hand between them, inviting both hiders to move farther away rather than rewarding the attempt to listen. They drifted toward the curb, still within the starting place.

Sophie glanced at him. "We could go together."

"For a bit."

"I didn't mean all night."

"I know."

Sophie was already looking toward the nearer corner. Noah stood with Connor now, neither of them appearing inclined to explain what they'd decided. Hannah shifted beside Ethan. He looked down at her hand checking her pocket, then at her face.

"You want to come with us?"

"With you."

"Okay."

"I'm not going to slow you down."

He hadn't said she would. He waited while she set both feet on the pavement, ready to prove something before anybody moved.

"We don't have to run the whole time," he said. "Pick when."

"I know."

"Then we're good."

She glanced at Sophie, who nodded toward the corner on her own. A route offered, not an instruction. Hannah looked back at Ethan and smiled a little. He bumped her shoulder once and moved aside when Marcus asked all the hiders to come level with the gate rather than creeping ahead while Ryan found his timer.

The screen lit Ryan's hands. Eight ten. Ethan caught the time without checking his own phone. Tyler was rolling his shoulders, Lucia tightening the tie in her hair. Natalie stood on the inside of the pavement; Marcus had moved where he could see the street, waiting for a car farther down to pass before they sent six people running toward the corner.

Ethan pushed his sleeves back from his wrists. His body had started anticipating the first steps, a pleasant impatience in his calves. There was nothing he needed to carry except the light and his phone, nothing he had to do well for somebody else. He wanted to win. He wanted Tyler to miss him by about an inch. He wanted to hear Ryan complain afterward.

"Ready?" Ryan asked.

Katie stood. "Yes."

"Everybody?"

Five more answers. Ethan put his hand briefly against Hannah's upper back, then let it fall. She didn't need launching.

"Go."

They scattered. Katie and Connor went past the next hedge; Noah followed for three strides before changing direction. Sophie took the corner on her own. Ethan went with Hannah, running fast enough to feel the pavement leave beneath each foot, slow enough that they reached the first turn together.

Behind them, Ryan called, "One!"

"You've got a timer!" Natalie shouted.

Ethan laughed without looking back. Hannah caught his sleeve for a moment as they turned, then released it and ran beside him. Sophie looked over her shoulder from the next driveway, smiling, and disappeared behind the bend in the sidewalk.

They had forty-five seconds. Ethan took Hannah toward the trees.

At the far end of the block, the count stopped. Tyler's shout reached them first, followed by several feet hitting the pavement, and Ethan felt the game begin.

Ethan slowed before the pavement ended. Hannah came level with him, breathing through her mouth, and checked behind them while he looked into the trees. The path was still there, a darker break in the weeds beside a fence. He could make out its first few yards without the light.

"Here," he said.

"I know."

"I'm saying where I'm going."

"Oh. Okay."

She went in after him. Leaves brushed his arm and sprang back against hers; she pushed one away from her face with a complaint too quiet to reach the street. Behind them, the sound of the seekers thinned into separate feet, somebody going around the corner, somebody staying nearer the house. Ethan took another dozen steps and stopped beside the thicker trunk where the path widened.

Hannah nearly walked into him.

"What?"

"Listen."

She stopped moving. He could hear their breathing, the last car somewhere behind the fence, a television through an open window. The night wasn't silent, and they'd never needed it to be. They needed to hear which sounds belonged to people trying to find them.

Ryan shouted something farther along the block. Tyler answered from another direction. Ethan smiled, trying to place them, and felt Hannah push his arm.

"Don't laugh."

"I'm not."

"You are with your face."

He pressed his lips together. She looked satisfied for about a second, then started smiling herself. Ethan stepped deeper into the shadow of the trunk, giving her the outside edge where she could still watch the path. There was enough space for both of them if neither insisted on standing square to the other.

A light swept the entrance. It touched the weeds, lifted to the fence, and disappeared. Ethan waited. Hannah's fingers caught his wrist without holding him in place. He could feel how hard she was trying not to move, not frightened, simply concentrating until her whole body joined the effort.

The light returned lower down.

"Anybody?" Lucia called.

Nobody answered. Ethan could see only part of her through the branches. She stood at the pavement with one foot aimed toward the path, listening. He considered staying still until she went away, then remembered what he'd just done to the leaves. They were still shaking near the entrance, and she was looking directly at them.

He touched Hannah's fingers, waited until she looked at him, and pointed farther along the path. She let go. They moved before Lucia stepped into the trees.

The first stretch curved behind the houses, dry dirt packed between shallow roots. Ethan knew where the ground dipped, where the old fence leaned, where a person could turn sideways and disappear behind a cluster of shrubs without crawling anywhere. He didn't take that turn. Lucia would be looking for stillness now. Better to keep moving until the path offered more than one direction.

Hannah stayed close enough that her shoes scuffed after his. He slowed at the roots rather than reaching back for her. She stepped over them cleanly, then caught up when they reached the next patch of level ground.

"Is she coming?" she asked.

"I don't know."

He listened again. Somebody was on the path behind them, but the pace was unhurried. Ethan could have turned it into a race immediately. Instead he let the bend put branches between them and the entrance, then stepped off onto the firm open patch beside a fallen trunk.

Hannah stopped at his shoulder. "Under that?"

"No."

"Good."

He grinned and settled into a crouch behind it. The wood was old enough to have lost bark in pale strips, still solid where his fingers tested the upper edge. He remembered it thicker. Or maybe he remembered the knees he'd had when getting down beside it didn't require thinking about where to put them.

Hannah crouched at the other end, keeping her sleeves away from the damp underside. She looked at him as if daring him to mention it. He didn't. There were easier places to get dirty tonight.

Footsteps came around the bend and passed them. Lucia's light moved slowly over the empty path, then toward the far side where a gap between trees could have held somebody standing. Ethan watched her shoes go by. She stopped once, angled the light back, and went on without looking behind the log.

Hannah turned toward him after the sound had faded. Her mouth opened. Ethan lifted one finger, not touching his lips, and waited a little longer.

"Now?" she whispered.

He nodded.

She leaned nearer. "She was right there."

"Yeah."

"I thought she saw me."

"She might've seen movement. Didn't see enough."

Hannah looked down at the space she'd occupied, judging whether it had concealed as much of her as she thought. Ethan stood slowly and brushed loose dirt from one knee. No tag. Nothing won yet. The pleasure was still immediate, bright enough that he wanted to catch Lucia's eye afterward and tell her exactly how close she'd come.

Not while the game was on.

They waited until there was no light ahead before returning to the path. Farther along, a low branch forced Ethan to duck. Hannah went beneath it without changing her stride and looked back at him.

"Useful," he said.

She smiled. "Sometimes."

He straightened on the other side. The neighborhood opened through a break in the trees: a stretch of sidewalk, a porch with two chairs, someone's laundry still hanging farther back in a yard. Ethan could smell somebody cooking even though they'd finished dinner. The air held warm oil and woodsmoke, then the damp leafy smell returned as they moved along the wooded edge.

Katie and Sophie appeared ahead, walking quickly toward the opening. Katie saw him first and raised a hand. Sophie glanced behind her before coming closer.

"Anybody?" she asked.

"Lucia came in behind us."

Katie turned. "How far?"

"Passed the log. Kept going."

"Then I'm not going that way."

Sophie was still looking at Hannah, who was smiling too openly to pretend the last few minutes hadn't pleased her. She touched Hannah's shoulder, light and quick, then looked at Ethan.

"Ryan went around toward the street. We heard him."

"So did we."

"He likes hearing himself," Katie said.

Ethan laughed under his breath. Sophie caught the sound and smiled, then pointed toward the opening rather than keeping them all in a group. Four people moving together would make enough noise to save the seekers some work.

"We're going farther along," she said.

"Okay."

Katie stepped past him and bumped his arm. He nudged her back, letting her have the narrower part of the path. Sophie followed her. For a few seconds he could hear them together, Katie saying something and Sophie answering, then the trees absorbed the words and left only movement.

Hannah watched them go. "We could've gone."

"We still can."

"I know." She looked toward the street again. "I want to see who's there."

Ethan liked the answer. Not just hiding behind him while he made every decision. He went toward the opening, stopping far enough back that the streetlight couldn't find his shirt. Hannah came beside him, one hand resting against the rough edge of a tree.

A person crossed the patch of light at the next corner. Natalie. Ethan recognized the way she stopped before looking back, giving herself a clear view along the sidewalk instead of walking through it with her head turned. Noah wasn't anywhere he could see. The pleasure of imagining those two looking for each other almost made him miss Ryan appearing from the opposite end.

"Oh, shit," he murmured.

Hannah drew back. "What?"

"Ryan."

She looked around the trunk, then withdrew before Ryan turned. He was coming toward the opening, not especially fast. Natalie had stayed near the corner. They hadn't closed anything neatly; there was still room to leave by the path behind them, except Lucia had gone that way and might be returning.

Ethan looked down at Hannah. She was already watching his face.

"Back?" she whispered.

"Maybe. Wait."

Ryan reached the light and stopped. Somebody farther down called his name. He turned halfway toward the voice. Ethan used the movement to step out, not running yet, putting the open space between himself and the woods before Ryan could be sure what he'd seen.

"Ethan!"

There was no point staying slow after that. Ethan went along the sidewalk, heard Hannah come out behind him, and looked once to check she'd chosen the same direction. She had. Ryan started after them with a delighted yell that probably told three other seekers where to look.

Ethan's first full strides felt good. He wasn't covering unfamiliar ground or carrying a bag, wasn't trying to arrive somewhere respectable without sweating through his shirt. The sidewalk rose slightly. He lengthened his stride, let the air fill his chest, and found the space between speed and hurry that running had given him years before he knew how useful it would become.

Hannah fell several steps behind. He didn't stop. The next corner had a broad patch of pavement beside the hedge, enough room to wait without becoming a handhold for Ryan. Ethan reached it, turned, and saw his sister running hard with her arms moving close to her sides.

"This way!"

She turned before reaching him. Ethan went with her, putting himself nearest the hedge while Ryan rounded the corner several yards back. He could hear the laughter inside Ryan's breathing now, a sound Ethan hadn't heard in months except through badly recorded videos.

"Come back!" Ryan called.

Ethan laughed. "No!"

The shout cost him breath. He didn't regret it. Hannah was laughing too, which wasn't helping her run, and pointed toward the narrow return path before he could. Ethan caught the opening just as a porch light brightened above them.

They went in one after the other. A voice from the porch said, "Watch the plants!"

"Sorry!" Ethan called, though neither had touched them.

Ryan apologized too, louder, still following. The path narrowed enough that he couldn't come level with them immediately. Ethan kept moving until they reached the place where it divided around a stand of saplings, then pointed Hannah left and went right himself.

He heard her protest begin and end when she saw where both branches came back together.

Ryan followed Ethan. Good. Ethan took the longer curve fast, one hand skimming the outside tree as he turned, and ducked behind a thicker trunk instead of continuing toward the meeting point. Ryan ran past him with his eyes on the next opening.

Ethan held still until the sound went beyond him. Then he went back a few steps, crossed behind the saplings, and found Hannah waiting at the joined path with both hands on her knees.

"Don't do that," she whispered fiercely.

"It comes back together."

"I saw. I mean disappear."

"I'm here."

She looked past him. Ryan's shoes scraped somewhere farther ahead; he'd realized enough to slow down. Ethan stayed beside her while she got one full breath in, then another. His own heart was beating harder, but it was willing. He could have gone again. She needed a moment, and he wanted her with him more than he wanted those extra yards.

"Ready?" he asked.

She straightened. "Yeah."

They took the path back toward the wooded edge rather than following Ryan. Ethan walked now, rolling his shoulders once to loosen them. Hannah matched him. When she could speak without pulling air between words, she said Ryan had almost reached her at the hedge.

"He didn't, though."

"No."

"You turned fast."

She glanced at him, checking whether he was making a lesson out of it. He wasn't. She'd turned fast. It had helped. Ethan stepped around a root and listened to the pursuit behind them become uncertain again.

They reached the wider path at a walk. Somewhere nearby Katie was laughing; he heard Connor answer, then a sudden scatter of feet. He couldn't tell who'd been running at whom. Hannah looked toward the sound, but Ethan touched her elbow and pointed farther on. She came willingly, still curious enough to glance back twice.

At the next bend, Katie was sitting on a stone with one shoe off. Connor stood beside her, half turned toward the path they'd just used. Ethan almost went past before she lifted her bare heel into the light that reached through the leaves.

"Stone," she said.

Hannah looked back toward the noise. "Was somebody after you?"

"Tyler. Went the other way."

Connor moved aside so they could stop without bunching up. Katie shook her shoe, tapped its heel against the stone, and looked inside again. Ethan could hear whatever was bothering her rattle once against the sole before dropping into the dirt.

"There."

"That was tiny," Connor said.

"It was in my shoe."

He accepted that. Hannah watched Katie put it back on, then glanced farther along the path, impatient to move and unwilling to leave while somebody was still bent over a lace. Ethan understood both feelings. He waited beside her until Katie planted the foot and stood.

"You two staying together?" Connor asked.

"For now," Ethan said.

Hannah looked at him. "Unless you disappear again."

Katie glanced between them, smiling. Ethan didn't explain the saplings. He wanted to tell it when they could argue about the same thirty seconds without listening for Tyler over each other's voices.

Connor heard something first. He turned his whole body, not just his head, and the little group went quiet. Steps, perhaps; Ethan couldn't separate them from the movement of leaves overhead. Katie nudged Connor toward the narrower trail. He went, and she followed after pressing a hand briefly against Hannah's shoulder.

Ethan took the wider path with his sister. They didn't make a promise to meet at a particular place. It was easier to watch Katie and Connor go together and know that whoever got caught first would have to look for the other without an answer waiting in somebody else's pocket.

The woods were darker away from the houses. Ethan took out the light and covered most of its lens with his fingers, letting the small remaining patch find the ground when roots thickened across it. No aiming it toward somebody's face, no sweeping it around like an invitation. Hannah used hers briefly too, checked one awkward step, then put it away.

Ethan remembered carrying a much bigger flashlight here once, something Kit had lent them with batteries that rattled in the handle. Tyler had insisted on taking it because Ethan was already carrying water. They'd argued until Sophie took both and started walking. He smiled at the memory, then lost it when a twig snapped ahead.

He stopped. Hannah stopped beside him, this time without nearly colliding.

No light. No voice. It could have been an animal, another hider, somebody using the path who had nothing to do with them. Ethan waited until the small noise repeated farther away and a person became visible against the lighter gap between trees.

Noah.

He saw them and lifted his hands in a question. Ethan shook his head, then nodded behind himself. Noah understood enough to move toward the side path rather than asking for a complete account. His glasses caught a brief piece of sky before he stepped beneath the branches.

"Still hiding?" Hannah whispered after he'd gone.

"Looked like it."

Ethan hadn't heard any capture called. That didn't guarantee none had happened farther away, but nobody near them had changed the game yet. Six people were trying to stay out of six people's reach, and all Ethan could actually know was the space around his own feet.

He checked his phone once, keeping it low. Eight twenty-four. The screen offered nothing urgent. He locked it and went on without opening anything else. For once the thing he wanted to be doing was exactly where he'd put his body.

Hannah brushed against him as they passed a patch of nettles. He moved sideways, letting her take the center of the path, and she thanked him without making a joke about his sleeves. Ahead, the ground descended toward the little footbridge. He remembered the approach before he saw it: a change in the dirt, the trees standing farther apart, the faintly hollow sound your steps made once you reached the boards.

They slowed. A person was moving beyond the bridge, then two. Ethan put his light away and drew back beside the trunk at the top of the shallow slope. Hannah settled near him, leaning just far enough to see.

Sophie was on the other side. Alone now, she came along the path toward the bridge at an easy jog, looking behind herself. Marcus appeared farther back, unhurried for two steps, then faster when she saw him and changed direction.

"Oh, no," Hannah said quietly.

Sophie went toward the fork instead of the boards. It was a good choice if she could get there first; one branch rose toward the street, the other kept to the woods. Marcus didn't follow directly behind. He came across the open ground beside the path, close enough that Sophie saw the angle and tried to turn back.

Emily appeared near the farther branch.

Ethan shifted his weight forward without meaning to. There was nothing he could do that wouldn't put himself and Hannah in reach too, and Sophie didn't need somebody shouting instructions she could already see.

She slipped past the first stretch of Marcus's arm, then checked before Emily could reach her from the other side. Ethan thought she'd stopped too long. He could see Emily setting her feet, expecting Sophie to come back toward the bridge.

Sophie went uphill instead.

It wasn't the easy branch. Her next step slid on the loose edge before she found the firmer middle, but she kept moving. Marcus turned after her, already a few yards late. Emily followed two strides and stopped, laughing with both hands on her hips.

"She got away!" Emily called.

Marcus slowed beyond the fork. Sophie had disappeared around the higher bend, still running by the sound of her shoes. No tag. Ethan let out the breath he'd been holding and felt Hannah's fingers loosen around his sleeve.

"Good," she whispered.

Emily pointed at Marcus while telling him something Ethan couldn't hear. He laughed and came back toward the boards. After another moment she turned with him, looking into the trees on their side of the bridge. They hadn't caught Sophie, but that wasn't going to make them stop looking.

Ethan eased away from the trunk. Hannah saw the movement and came beside him. Down the slope, the low boards waited above the dark shallow channel. The crossing was no higher than Ethan remembered; beyond it the two paths separated, both familiar, neither empty enough to trust.

He pointed to the nearer end of the bridge. Hannah nodded, and they moved toward the fork with six people now looking for them.

Emily's voice was still carrying across the fork when Ethan put one foot on the first plank of the little bridge.

He stopped. Hannah stopped behind him, close enough that her hand struck his elbow. Somewhere beyond the fork, Marcus laughed, and Emily said something about them both watching the wrong branch. The words carried through the trees without either of them sounding particularly upset.

"There isn't a wrong branch," Marcus called.

"There is when I'm looking at the other one."

Ethan grinned despite himself. The bridge crossed a shallow dip in the path, nothing worth going beneath, with a rail that would announce anyone leaning against it. He stepped back onto dirt and turned Hannah gently by touching the outside of her arm.

"Wait."

"I heard." She pointed beyond his shoulder. "That's why I stopped."

He'd been about to explain the next part too. Instead, he looked where she was pointing. A moving patch of pale shirt showed between two trunks on the wider branch of the trail. Marcus and Emily had chased Sophie close enough that the noise could reach them; that didn't mean either knew who was listening.

"This way," Hannah whispered.

She went around the fork instead of across the bridge. Ethan followed, stepping over a root he'd remembered as smaller. Hannah picked the firmer edge of the path without checking behind her, and he let her set the pace until they were out of sight of the planks.

At eight twenty-eight, there were six hiders. He counted them while they walked: himself, Hannah, Sophie, Katie, Noah, Connor. Six people had started out trying to catch them. Half and half, although six seekers spread through the neighborhood didn't feel like half of anything when he couldn't see a single one.

Hannah stopped beside a broad trunk and pulled the cuff of her shirt away from her wrist. A mosquito lifted from her skin. She slapped after it and missed.

"You brought them with you," she said.

"From California?"

"You could've brought something better."

He laughed quietly, then pressed his mouth closed when footsteps reached the bridge. The planks made two dull knocks. Someone stopped halfway across. Hannah came nearer the tree, not behind Ethan, and leaned just far enough to see back along the bend.

Emily's voice arrived first. "She went up."

"I saw," Marcus said.

"I thought she'd turn back."

"So did I."

"You want to go after her?"

"Not up there. She'll hear us coming."

Ethan watched the pale shirt move between the trees. They could have followed Sophie until they caught her. They could also look for somebody who hadn't just run uphill ahead of them, somebody standing inconveniently close to the little bridge. He hoped they chose neither while he was still close enough to hear them make the decision.

The bridge knocked once more. Marcus moved on. Emily stayed near the fork long enough that Ethan began feeling the roughness of the bark through the back of his shirt.

Hannah put two fingers on his forearm. When he looked at her, she pointed down, then toward the open ground beyond their shoes. He followed the direction. A streetlight beyond the woodland edge put a pale stripe across the dirt. His shadow reached farther into it than his body did.

He shifted closer to the trunk. The shadow disappeared.

Hannah's mouth moved in a pleased little smile. He leaned toward her ear without touching it. "Nice."

"I know."

They waited another few breaths. Emily went toward Marcus's retreating steps instead of turning onto their branch, and Hannah released Ethan's sleeve. He hadn't noticed she was still holding it.

"You were very obvious," she whispered.

"Apparently."

"I wasn't."

"I'm noticing that."

She stepped away from the tree with considerably more confidence than she'd had before the bridge. Ethan followed her along the curve, watching the light instead of only the things solid enough to hide behind. It was the kind of mistake he'd have given Tyler shit for making. He was glad Tyler hadn't been there to see it.

The path came out beside the sidewalk through a gap wide enough for both of them. They stayed beneath the last branches while a car went by, headlights passing over the curb and then the empty street beyond. Across the road, somebody had left a television on near a window. Ethan could see changing colors but couldn't hear anything over the car.

Hannah touched the back of her neck. "Do you know where we're going?"

"A little farther up."

"That's a direction."

"Yeah. I haven't picked a spot."

She considered that, apparently deciding she preferred the honest answer. He looked both ways before stepping onto the sidewalk. Hannah came beside him. The trees behind them kept making little sounds after they'd left, and he wanted to turn around every time.

Home hadn't stayed perfectly still while he was gone. A hedge had grown higher. Someone had replaced a fence panel he remembered leaning away from the street. The sidewalk had the same uneven place, though. His foot found the rise without much help from his eyes.

"Watch that," he said.

Hannah stepped over it. "I've lived here the whole time."

"Right."

He kept walking. She bumped his arm once, less an objection than a reminder, then fell half a step behind when the sidewalk narrowed around a pole. He waited at the other side without announcing it. She passed him and took the lead again.

They hadn't reached the next corner when Hannah stopped beside a parked hatchback. Ethan nearly kept going, then saw the movement reflected in the dark window: someone on the sidewalk behind them, coming out near the opening they'd used. He stepped back before the person could see past the car.

"Emily?" he whispered.

Hannah shook her head. She hadn't seen enough either. Ethan could make out a shoulder and part of a head in the reflection, stretched by the curve of the glass. He wanted a better look badly enough that he almost leaned around the hood.

Hannah caught his shirt. "Don't."

He stayed. The reflection moved closer, then stopped near the pole they'd passed. A phone lit briefly in the person's hand, and Ethan recognized Marcus by the way he held it out from his chest. He was reading something, not using it to find them. The screen went dark almost immediately.

They waited beside the car while Marcus turned toward the opposite corner. Ethan had run against him enough times to know he didn't want a straight chase with so little room to build speed. Marcus didn't need to be faster over the whole distance. He only needed to reach him once.

A passing car briefly whitened the sidewalk. Hannah shifted closer to Ethan, bringing her shoes out of the narrow strip beneath the hatchback. Marcus looked their way. Ethan held still, one hand resting against his own thigh instead of on the car, and waited until Marcus continued up the other branch of the street.

"Okay," Hannah whispered.

She moved first. Ethan followed without asking how she'd decided the distance was enough; he could see Marcus retreating between the parked vehicles himself. At the corner, they paused where the streetlight reached them and checked the sidewalk behind them again.

"You're good at this," Ethan said.

"I told you."

He smiled. She wasn't asking for a speech about growing up. She wanted him to stop being surprised that she could look at the same street and notice something useful. He turned beside her, matching her quieter pace while Marcus's footsteps faded.

Ahead, somebody came around the corner fast enough that Ethan's first thought was Ryan. Then the person slowed beside the curb, adjusted something at their face, and became Noah.

"Jesus," Noah said when he saw them.

"Same team," Ethan reminded him.

"I know. You're still standing there."

Noah had one hand around the front of his glasses, holding them while he caught his breath. He looked past Ethan toward the path opening, then back up the sidewalk he'd come from.

"Emily?" he asked.

"She came in with Marcus."

"Great."

Hannah looked at him. "You've been running the whole time?"

"No. Some of it was walking badly." He put the glasses back on. "I went around the long way. Thought Natalie was waiting at the other end."

"Was she?" Ethan asked.

"I didn't stay to check."

Ethan nodded. Noah could make himself harder to catch by declining to prove he was right. He'd also made himself very audible coming around the corner. Their conversation probably wasn't improving that.

Sophie appeared behind Noah with both hands pressed to her sides and stopped when she recognized them. "You said you'd wait."

"I did wait."

"At the turn. I said at the turn."

Noah looked back. "That was a turn."

"A different one."

She wasn't trying to make the distinction funny. She was still catching her breath, and Noah looked properly sorry when he saw it. Ethan moved nearer the woodland opening to leave her room on the sidewalk.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." Sophie looked at Hannah. "You're still with him?"

"He's with me."

Sophie smiled. "Good. He needs help."

Ethan would have objected if he hadn't just needed help. Hannah didn't offer the shadow story yet, which meant she might be saving it for a larger audience. He accepted the delay as the best outcome currently available.

They stood together only long enough to hear a shout farther down the block. The voice sounded like Ryan's, although Ethan couldn't tell whether he'd found someone or was asking somebody else where they'd gone. Noah straightened immediately. Sophie moved her hair out of her collar.

"I'm going this way," she said, pointing along the sidewalk.

"I'll come," Noah told her.

"Then come. Don't disappear at another turn."

"I won't."

They went together. Ethan watched until a parked car hid their legs, then turned back toward Hannah. She was looking into the trees they'd just left.

"We could go back."

He checked the opening. "We could."

"They won't think we went back."

"They might."

"Okay, but they're not there now."

He couldn't hear anyone near the bridge anymore. Being the smallest person on the team hadn't made her cautious by default; she'd spent years watching them choose routes, and she actually remembered some of the choices. Ethan stepped aside to let her enter first.

"Show me."

She gave him a suspicious look, checking for condescension. He waited. Whatever she found in his face satisfied her, because she went through the gap and took the nearer curve without another word.

The woodland air felt cooler after the sidewalk. A thin branch brushed Ethan's hair, and he held it aside until Hannah passed instead of allowing it to spring after him. They could hear the bridge again before seeing it. No voices. No footsteps. Hannah stopped short of the light stripe and waited for him to catch up.

"Left or right?" she whispered.

He looked toward the bridge. "Left. There's more room."

"For you."

"For both of us."

She accepted that. They kept to the wider path instead of pushing through undergrowth, their shoes quiet until Ethan caught a fallen twig beneath his heel. It snapped cleanly enough that he froze.

Nothing happened.

Then Emily called, "Ethan?"

Hannah closed her eyes for one annoyed second. Ethan covered a laugh before it became useful evidence. Emily was farther back than he'd expected, somewhere near the branch they'd taken earlier. He hadn't heard her return.

"That you?" she asked.

Ethan didn't answer. Hannah pointed forward, and they began moving faster, still walking until the curve took the opening out of view. The next footstep behind them was louder, followed by Emily calling his name again with more confidence.

He took off.

Hannah came after him immediately. The path straightened enough to run, and Ethan kept the first stretch short rather than opening a gap she couldn't close. She passed the root before he warned her about it. He swallowed the warning and kept going.

"I can hear you!" Emily shouted.

Ethan looked back once. Her shirt flashed through the bend, nearer than he wanted. He faced forward and ran harder. Hannah's steps stayed close, quick and uneven but not stumbling, and the little burst of laughter she let out made him grin.

They reached the sidewalk again at a different opening. Ethan slowed before the curb. Hannah slowed with him. A car passed, then another, and Emily's footsteps kept coming behind them.

"Shit," he said.

Hannah grabbed his wrist and pulled him along the sidewalk instead of waiting to cross. He went with her. Emily came out behind them just as the second car cleared, making a frustrated sound when she found the same empty stretch ahead.

The pavement gave Ethan back his stride. He came level with Hannah, then edged ahead only enough to see around the next parked vehicle. She kept running. Their hands separated without a decision, his wrist sliding out of her grip when she needed both arms.

At the corner, they stayed on the sidewalk. Emily followed, but the distance had grown by the time Ethan looked back. He could hear her laughing and swearing between breaths.

"Don't stop here," Hannah said.

He'd been about to. Not because they were safe, because the corner felt like the end of a useful run. He kept going until the next patch of trees, where the path offered a bend and several broad trunks without requiring them to leave the walking surface.

They went around the bend and stopped together.

Hannah put her hands on her knees. Ethan leaned against a trunk, breathing through the heat in his face. His heart worked hard enough to make the ordinary night sound distant for a few seconds.

"You said more room," Hannah managed.

"There was."

"For Emily."

He laughed and let his head touch the bark. She laughed too, then made herself quiet when footsteps approached the woodland edge. Emily slowed outside. Ethan could hear her shoes scuff once, then stop.

"You little assholes," she said, not loudly enough to be sure they'd hear.

Hannah pressed her lips together. Ethan looked down until he trusted his face. The steps moved away along the sidewalk rather than entering the path, and neither sibling followed the sound with an answer.

When it faded, Hannah straightened. "That was me."

"Yeah."

"Not crossing."

"I know." He pushed away from the tree. "You saved us."

She looked pleased without hiding it. He didn't ruin that by adding a qualification about what he would have done eventually. Emily had been close, the cars had been real, and Hannah had chosen a route while he was still watching the road.

They walked for a while after that. Eight thirty-nine showed on his phone when he checked it, the screen held low and turned away from the open path. Hannah took the opportunity to fix a shoelace that had loosened but hadn't come undone. He watched the bend while she crouched.

"Can you see anything?" she asked.

"Trees."

"Helpful."

"Nobody moving."

She stood, testing the shoe once. Ethan put his phone away and went with her toward the next branch. The run had left sweat cooling beneath his shirt. He liked the tiredness. It occupied the places in his body that had spent the afternoon bracing for conversations he couldn't organize in advance.

Nothing needed explaining out here except where to put his feet.

Connor supplied a problem anyway.

They found him sitting on a low rock beside the path, one shoe planted and the other loose in his hand. He looked up when Ethan stopped.

"Don't say it."

Ethan looked at the shoe. "What happened?"

"Something's in it."

Hannah stayed near the bend. "You should hurry."

"I'm trying." Connor turned the shoe over and shook it again. A small pebble struck the dirt. "There."

Ethan wanted to laugh at the huge relief on his face, but he'd run with something smaller grinding beneath his heel and understood. Connor put the shoe on, stood too early, then sat again to finish the lace.

"Katie?" he asked.

"Haven't seen her," Ethan said.

"She ditched me."

"You sat down."

"After."

Hannah turned toward them. "Somebody's coming."

Connor pulled both loops tight. Ethan heard the steps a moment later, light and quick on the flatter path beyond the bend. There wasn't enough room for all three of them to stand pretending they were trees.

"Come on," Ethan said.

Connor got up. They moved together, Hannah first because she was already facing the right direction, Ethan behind her, Connor bringing his newly comfortable shoe around the rock. The approaching steps stopped. For two seconds, Ethan thought they'd gone unheard.

"Connor?" Lucia called.

Connor swore softly.

"I can see your arm."

He pulled it close to his side as though that might undo the problem. Ethan looked back and saw Lucia beyond the turn, one hand lifted to move a branch that hung across the path. She'd recognized a piece of him and was finding the rest.

Connor went left at the next branch. Hannah kept right. Ethan followed Hannah, then stopped near the first broad trunk when Connor's footsteps changed into a sudden, scraping halt.

Lucia hadn't followed the longest way around the bend. She'd taken the short connecting path Ethan could see through the space between the trees, coming out almost level with Connor while he was still turning.

Connor tried to stop, recover, and go back the way he'd come. Lucia caught his upper arm with an open hand before his second step.

"Got you."

He stood there breathing hard, looking at the place her hand had touched. "Fuck."

Lucia laughed. "You ran straight at me."

"I noticed late."

"Apparently." She let her hand fall. "You okay?"

Connor nodded and looked down at his shoe. "Finally."

Ethan couldn't hear the explanation he offered next because Hannah was pulling him farther along their branch. He went, keeping low only until the trunks blocked Lucia's view. Connor hadn't looked toward them. He hadn't needed to, and Ethan appreciated the choice.

For several minutes they walked without speaking, pausing at each bend to listen before moving on. The trail began climbing. Hannah glanced back twice. Ethan listened for a second set of footsteps and heard only their own, a faint voice behind them, and traffic beyond the trees.

At eight forty-eight, he touched Hannah's shoulder and pointed toward the wooded rise ahead. She looked up the path, still breathing through her mouth, then nodded.

They started uphill together.

The rise looked steeper from the bottom than Ethan remembered it looking from the top.

He took the climb at a walk. Hannah stayed beside him for the first few steps, then moved behind when the path narrowed. Loose dirt slid beneath one of his shoes, and he shortened the next step rather than pretend the slope hadn't changed.

"How far?" she asked.

"Just past these trees."

"You said that before."

"Different trees."

She made a quiet, unimpressed sound. He smiled and kept walking, one hand raised near his face when the lower branches reached the path. He could hear someone farther uphill. A shoe scraping bark, then Katie swearing at something he couldn't see yet.

They found her in the low fork of a tree beside the flatter stretch. She had both knees drawn close and one arm around the trunk, her shoes tucked high enough that a person standing beneath couldn't simply reach out and end her evening.

"What are you doing?" Ethan asked.

Katie looked down. "What does it look like?"

"You look very comfortable."

"I'm not."

Hannah went nearer the tree without leaving the path. "Left Connor, huh?"

Katie shook her head. "He went somewhere."

"Lucia got him," Ethan said.

"Fuck. Really?"

"We saw it."

Katie let her head rest against the trunk. "I told him not to sit down."

"There was a rock in his shoe."

"There was a rock in everybody's shoe. Hell, there was one in my shoe."

Hannah lifted one foot, apparently checking. Ethan laughed softly. Katie looked along the trail toward the top of the rise, then down toward the way they'd come. She hadn't chosen the tree for comfort. The wide fork held her without making her balance on a thin limb, and the trunk itself blocked part of her from anyone coming up the path.

It would have worked better if everybody hadn't known the tree.

Tyler's voice reached them from below. "Katie?"

She closed her eyes. Ethan turned toward the sound and couldn't see him yet, only the bend they'd passed and the darker patches beneath the leaves.

"You up there again?" Tyler called.

Katie lowered one foot onto the broad foothold she'd used to climb. "I'm leaving."

"I can climb that."

"I know."

She wasn't trying to prove him wrong. Ethan moved Hannah farther along the flatter path while Katie came down on the opposite side of the trunk, using the same holds in reverse. Her shoes reached the ground before Tyler appeared around the bend.

He saw Ethan first and grinned.

"There you are."

Ethan ran.

Hannah went with him. Katie was already moving, coming level for two strides before taking the next branch away from them. Tyler made a brief, exasperated noise at being offered three backs instead of one and followed the siblings.

The path widened enough for Ethan to gain speed, but the bend ahead made him save it. Hannah's breath sounded close on his left. He could hear Tyler behind them, nearer than Emily had been, and the first burst of laughter came out of Ethan before he could help it.

"You're laughing too loud," Hannah said.

"I know."

Tyler called his name. Ethan looked back and found his brother smiling too, running hard enough that the smile looked unreasonable. He faced forward before the next root and came around the bend without losing his footing.

Hannah caught the inside line. Ethan took the wider curve rather than crowd her, and Tyler lost another few steps because he couldn't go through both of them. The tree cover thinned ahead, showing pavement and the corner of a street sign.

They slowed at the opening. Ethan looked left, right, then left again. Empty street. Hannah crossed beside him, their shoes loud against the road for the few seconds before they reached the opposite sidewalk.

Tyler came out behind them and checked the road too. Ethan didn't wait to watch him cross. He turned along the sidewalk with Hannah, letting the distance they'd made stay theirs.

"Didn't catch Katie," Hannah said between breaths.

"No."

"Or us."

Ethan grinned. "Not yet."

She gave him a look as they slowed near the next corner. He took the warning and didn't make the sentence worse. Tyler still had more people to choose from, and Ethan didn't particularly want to offer himself while they stood laughing.

They went around the corner at a walk, then cut back into the public path through the trees when Tyler's steps stayed on the other stretch of sidewalk. Ethan listened until the sound passed the opening. His brother didn't call again.

For a moment, Hannah leaned against his arm. Not asking to be carried, just resting some of the run against him while she got her breathing back. He stayed still, her shoulder warm through his sleeve.

"Want to walk a bit?" he asked.

"We are walking."

"I mean without running after."

She looked toward the way they'd come. "You can't promise that."

"True."

She straightened on her own and started along the path. Ethan followed, glad he hadn't tried to turn a short rest into a decision about whether she should still be playing.

At eight fifty-four, the game still had five hiders. He knew where two of them were, had just watched Katie leave a tree, and could only hope Noah and Sophie had kept moving in the right direction. Seven people could come looking now. Connor might be slower after sitting with his shoe off, but he knew the routes as well as the rest.

Hannah brushed something off her sleeve. "Are we going north?"

"A little. Not all the way."

"Good."

He didn't want the tunnel either. It marked where their game ended, not another hiding place. They'd keep south of that edge near Quarry Park, with the streets toward North End available if they needed them. The eastern routes could lead toward the Quinnipiac without taking anybody down to the water. Tonight he wanted the familiar turns through Fair Haven Heights, not the longest possible run to a boundary.

The old route bent toward the street and the legal railway crossing farther along it. Ethan could hear a vehicle somewhere ahead, then the ordinary clatter of feet on pavement. Hannah slowed before they left the tree cover.

Sophie stood near the corner with Noah, looking back the way they'd come. Noah had both hands on his hips. He straightened when he saw Ethan.

"Again," he said.

"You didn't go very far."

"Neither did you."

Sophie looked at Hannah. "Anybody behind you?"

"Tyler was," Hannah said. "We lost him."

"We hope," Ethan added.

Hannah nudged his arm, but it was true. They hadn't watched his brother walk home. Losing the sound of him didn't prove he wouldn't appear at the next turn.

Noah looked toward the crossing. "I thought that would be shut already."

The warning lights were dark. The gates were up. Ethan could see along the street and through the clear pedestrian route; nothing required climbing, squeezing around a barrier, or stepping off the crossing to make it work.

"It isn't," Sophie said.

"I can see that."

"Then we can go."

She went first, checking the road before entering the marked route. Ethan followed with Hannah beside him. He looked along the railway as they crossed but didn't stop to inspect it. The rails belonged under the crossing, not beneath their feet anywhere else.

Noah stayed near the corner behind them long enough to adjust his glasses again. Ethan glanced back when they reached the far side. He expected Noah to follow.

The bell started before he did.

Noah stopped short of the crossing. Red lights flashed above the street, and the gate began lowering between them with a slow certainty that made every idea of hurrying irrelevant.

"Stay there," Ethan called.

Noah held up one hand. "I am."

He moved farther back onto the sidewalk, out of the pedestrian approach. Ethan did the same on his side with Hannah and Sophie. A car stopped at the line. Another pulled up behind it. The bell sounded much louder now that nobody was speaking over it.

Hannah looked down the railway. "Is it a long one?"

"We'll find out."

Sophie took a few steps along their sidewalk, watching the direction they'd come from without trying to see around the gate. Ethan turned toward Noah again. Noah wasn't looking at the train anymore.

He was looking down the street.

Natalie came around the corner at a jog and slowed when she saw the lowered gate. For a second, she appeared to be considering the people opposite her. Then her attention shifted to Noah, standing on the same safe stretch of sidewalk she occupied.

"Oh, come on," Noah said.

Ethan heard it clearly before the approaching train swallowed the next words. Noah turned away from the crossing and tried to run back along the sidewalk. Natalie had come far enough around the corner to close that route before he found space to get past.

Her hand touched his shoulder. Noah stopped, then looked upward with both palms open, his complaint visible even when it wasn't audible.

Sophie pressed one hand over her mouth.

The first carriage passed between them.

Hannah turned toward Ethan. "Did she get him?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't see her hand."

"I did."

Hannah looked back through the moving gaps she couldn't actually see through. Then she shrugged and came farther along the sidewalk with Sophie, letting the gate remain a gate rather than something to argue with.

The train filled the street with metal, light, and a rush of air Ethan could feel even from where they'd stopped. He took another step back without making it a lesson. Hannah copied him, her shirt moving against her side in the stirred air.

Four hiders. Eight seekers. Noah would be allowed to complain about Natalie waiting at the perfect corner for as long as anybody listened. He wouldn't be allowed to point at the people he'd just watched cross.

Ethan couldn't see whether he was keeping that promise. He trusted him to keep it anyway.

They left before the last carriage passed. The train bought them distance, not permission to stand still until the gate lifted and Natalie came after them. Sophie walked beside Hannah, moving more slowly than she had before the run. Ethan kept on the outer edge of the sidewalk and looked toward the next turn.

The crossing bell followed them for most of the block. It stopped before the next corner. Ethan checked behind them and saw only the ordinary street, the queued cars beginning to move again, and the trees shutting off the view beyond.

"That was lucky," Sophie said.

"For Natalie," Hannah replied.

"For us too."

Hannah considered that. "Mostly Natalie."

Sophie smiled and let it stand. Noah would probably agree with the assessment. Ethan could already imagine him demonstrating exactly where he'd been standing later, with enough accuracy to make Natalie enjoy it more.

They went through the next public path entrance together. The pavement gave way to firm dirt, and Ethan felt the difference under his heels before the street noise thinned. Hannah moved ahead where the path narrowed. Sophie stayed behind him, close enough that he heard her breath change when the ground rose.

"We can slow down," he said.

"I know."

She didn't sound offended. She also didn't want him to stop on her behalf. He let the pace ease without making the movement so obvious that it became another sentence.

They'd played here at ages when being caught could ruin somebody's night for five whole minutes. Ethan remembered the indignation more clearly than particular scores: someone insisting a sleeve didn't count, somebody else insisting it absolutely did, Tyler asking a grown-up to settle something the grown-up hadn't witnessed. They'd kept coming back until the arguments became as familiar as the places.

Now Sophie was breathing hard behind him, Hannah was choosing where to step, and somebody's phone made a muffled sound from a pocket. They were older enough to know better ways to spend a Friday night. Apparently none of them had wanted one.

Katie crossed their path at the next fork, coming from the flatter branch with a streak of dirt down one calf. She stopped when she saw them and put one hand against the nearest trunk.

"Still in?" Sophie asked.

Katie nodded. "Tyler can fuck off."

"He came after us," Ethan said.

"Then he came after me. I saw him again."

Hannah looked at the dirt on her leg. "Did you fall?"

"No. Tree." Katie brushed at it, making the streak wider rather than removing it. "Where's Noah?"

"Natalie got him at the crossing," Sophie said.

Katie looked toward the street, then back at Ethan. He nodded. She took a moment to catch her breath without asking how much longer they intended to play. Nobody had agreed to quit at a particular minute. They'd agreed to get caught, which had seemed easier to arrange before all the running.

"You want to come?" Sophie asked.

Katie pushed away from the trunk. "For a bit."

She joined Sophie behind Ethan, their conversation low enough that he caught only a complaint about somebody's shoes and Sophie's answer that hers had been comfortable earlier. Hannah moved aside where the branch widened. Katie passed her, then turned back to hold a hanging twig until Sophie cleared it.

Ethan checked the time while they were all walking. Nine oh one. The minute surprised him. He'd been measuring the evening in bursts of footsteps, pauses long enough to breathe, and voices that meant they couldn't use the path he'd wanted. Somewhere inside that, half an hour had disappeared.

He put the phone away before the screen gave their position to anyone looking from the darker ground ahead. Hannah had moved close again, her arm brushing his when they stepped around the same root. Katie went farther up the wider branch, Sophie following a few paces behind. Ethan stayed with Hannah instead of trying to gather all four of them into the same space.

At the next bend, Hannah stopped so suddenly that Ethan nearly bumped her.

Ryan stood on the wider trail ahead. Katie was farther up than the rest of them, already turning onto the branch opposite his position. She disappeared around its bend while Ryan looked past her toward the three people still coming toward him.

He looked as surprised as Ethan felt for half a second. Then his face changed, and Ethan had to decide which way to turn while there was still room to do it.

"Back," he said.

Hannah was already turning. Ethan moved out of Sophie's way, catching the edge of her sleeve by accident and releasing it before it pulled. She went past him down the path they'd climbed.

Ryan ran after them.

Ethan took the short connecting branch with Hannah, the one that curved around the stand of trees and returned to the broader trail farther along. Sophie kept to the wider way. There wasn't time to tell her which one he'd chosen without telling Ryan too.

He heard Ryan follow her.

The next few seconds belonged to Ethan's shoes, Hannah's quick breath, and the bend approaching faster than it looked. He shortened his stride and stayed outside her shoulder through the curve. Her shoe slipped a little on the loose edge, caught, and continued. She didn't need him to grab her.

On the other path, Sophie cried, "Shit!"

Ethan stopped behind the thicker trees where the connecting branch flattened. Hannah went two more steps before turning back. He could see the wider route through the gap, enough to find Sophie's pale face and Ryan reaching her from behind.

His hand landed between her shoulder blades, a clear touch rather than an attempt to shove. She slowed immediately and put both hands on her hips.

"Got you," Ryan said.

"Yeah. I felt it."

He bent forward, breathing hard enough that he didn't answer. Sophie turned toward him, laughed once, and then had to breathe too. Neither looked down the branch where Ethan and Hannah had stopped.

Ethan went on before Ryan straightened.

Hannah followed him in silence until they reached the broader path. She glanced over her shoulder when Ryan called something he couldn't make out, then looked at Ethan.

"Sophie?"

"He got her."

She let out a breath. "So it's us and Katie."

"Looks like it."

He hadn't seen Katie tagged. He'd seen her get down cleanly, found her still playing after the crossing, and watched her choose the branch away from Ryan. That was enough to leave her in the game until he learned otherwise.

Three hiders was a much smaller number when two of them were standing beside each other.

Hannah looked toward the next incline. "We can't just keep going around."

"I know."

"They'll find us."

"I'm thinking."

He checked his phone once more, then tried the wider path first. It would have taken them back toward the streets, with room to run and several choices after the next corner. A voice reached them before they made the bend. Emily, talking to someone Ethan couldn't distinguish.

He stopped. Hannah touched his elbow this time instead of running into it.

Behind them, a shoe struck loose stone.

Ethan turned and saw Lucia at the far end of the connecting trail. Connor came into view behind her, looking along the branch before noticing the two people standing exactly where it joined.

Lucia lifted her head. "Ethan!"

Hannah swore quietly. Ethan almost laughed at how naturally it came out, but Lucia had started running and there wasn't time to enjoy it properly.

He took the uphill branch.

Hannah came with him, closer than she'd been during the last chase. The incline pulled at his calves. He could feel every earlier burst of speed arriving in the next one, not enough to stop him but enough to make him choose his steps instead of flinging himself anywhere that looked open.

He knew somewhere they could go.

He hadn't meant to take Hannah there tonight. He hadn't meant to be choosing between Lucia behind them and Emily somewhere below either. The path ahead bent toward the close rocks above the next stand of trees, still inside the woodland routes they were allowed to use.

"This way," he said.

"Where?"

"Come on. Just up here."

She followed without asking again. Ethan could hear Lucia's steps gaining at the foot of the rise and Connor calling her name, the words lost beneath his own breathing.

His phone stayed in his pocket. It had shown nine oh eight at the last glance, just before Emily's voice stopped them. He didn't need to look again to know how much of the next minute they had.

Hannah stayed beside him as the trees began to open around the rocks.

The last stretch of the rise had always looked shorter from below. Ethan took it in quick, uneven steps, slowing where the dry leaves hid the ground instead of trying to jump what he couldn't see. A root crossed the path at an angle. He stepped over it and heard Hannah do the same behind him.

His calves had begun complaining before they reached the two trunks. He'd been running in bursts all evening, not the steady pace he liked on an ordinary route, and the hill made every change of direction cost something. Hannah's breathing came closer when he shortened his stride. She wasn't asking him to wait. She was keeping up.

A light swept the lower path. Ethan turned his head just enough to see the beam pass across the bark, then grinned back at his sister. She caught him looking and made a sharp little gesture telling him to face forward.

He did. Another few steps took them beyond the clearest sight line from below. Here, the wooded ground wrinkled around the stone, leaving the opening tucked behind a jutting edge. It was a stupidly ordinary place to have become such a good hiding spot. No door, no fence, nothing anyone had built. He'd found a gap and been small enough to use it.

Still there. Of course it was still there. He'd spent half the climb behaving as though a piece of rock might have moved to punish him for leaving Connecticut.

"Here," he said.

Hannah stopped beside him. She looked at the seam, then at his face. "No."

"You haven't even seen it."

"I can see it right now."

Below them, Tyler called Ethan's name. He sounded delighted, which was a horrible quality in a person trying to catch you. Another set of feet came around the lower bend. Ethan couldn't see whose. The wooded slope broke the sound into little bursts of dry leaves and harder ground.

He grinned at Hannah. "Come on."

"That's your disgusting hole."

"It's not a hole."

She pointed at it. "What would you call that?"

He could have stayed to argue, which would have been satisfying for about three seconds before Tyler put a hand on his shoulder. Instead, he slipped his light from his pocket, aimed the beam down, and stepped into the narrow opening.

The first part required a sideways shuffle. His shirt brushed stone near one elbow. Underfoot, leaves covered the shallow dip where the rock walls widened, still open to the trees and the dark sky above. Nothing closed over his head.

"Ethan." Hannah's voice changed as he vanished around the small bend. "Wait."

He stopped where she could see his hand. "I'm right here."

She ducked a twig, turned her shoulders, and followed him with a furious little exhale. He moved farther in so she had room. Her shoe slid against a stone. She steadied herself before he reached for her.

"Don't touch the green part," she said.

"I wasn't going to."

"I was telling myself."

Ethan laughed and nearly gave their position away more loudly than their entry already had. He put his hand over his mouth. Hannah looked at him as though restraint introduced at this late stage could accomplish anything useful.

Tyler reached the rise. Ethan heard him stop, then the scrape of his shoe as he came toward the opening.

"You little shit."

"Love you too," Ethan called.

Hannah hit his arm. "Stop helping them."

"He knows."

"He didn't know I was in here."

Tyler laughed outside. "I do now."

Hannah closed her eyes for a second. Ethan watched her fail not to smile, then moved his light toward the ground so it wouldn't shine through the opening. She had made it past the narrowest part. The two walls stood far enough apart here that she could face him without folding herself around the stone.

Hannah pulled her own light out and tried the beam along the floor. It made the gap look smaller, not worse: two pairs of shoes, a scatter of leaves, the rounded stone she'd nearly stepped on. She tilted it upward once, checking that the sky really stayed there, then switched it off and tucked it away. Ethan liked that she'd checked for herself. He'd have been irritated if somebody had told him a place was fine and then expected him to stop looking.

He'd forgotten how the place smelled. Cold mineral damp underneath old leaves, with ordinary summer woods above it. The stone held the coolness differently from the dirt outside. Sweat dried along his spine. For the first time in several minutes, he could hear his own breathing without feet landing over it.

Hannah inspected the wall behind his shoulder. "There's stuff on it."

"Yeah."

"You told me it wasn't that bad."

"It isn't."

She moved the beam with two fingers against his wrist. A pale patch caught the light, rough against the darker stone. Below it, a small insect disappeared beneath a curled leaf.

"There. Did you see that?"

"It's outside, Hannah."

"I know where we are."

He pressed his lips together. She was trying so hard to be annoyed that laughing would only make her work harder. He lowered the light, leaving enough on the dry patch by their shoes that she could choose where to stand.

Outside, Ryan arrived with the noise of somebody who'd taken the last few steps too quickly. He said something to Tyler. Tyler answered, then Ryan's face appeared in the opening, visible in the faint spill from his own light.

"Seriously?"

Ethan lifted one hand. "Hi."

"You've been home for, what, six hours?"

"Missed you."

Ryan crouched and reached toward him. His hand stopped several feet short of Ethan's shoe. He shifted sideways, tried again, and discovered the same narrow bend that had defeated him before Ethan moved away.

"Still doesn't work," Ethan said.

"Shut up. I'm checking."

Hannah moved her foot back despite the distance. Ethan could feel the laugh building in him, loose and ridiculous. He'd run up a hill to stand between rocks while his friends complained that they couldn't reach him. There was no useful adult version of the situation.

Good.

Ryan withdrew his hand. "Hannah's in there?"

"Unfortunately," she said.

"You finally went in?"

"We were being chased."

"That's generally why people hide."

"Then go look for somebody."

Tyler's laugh came from behind Ryan. Ryan looked back at him, then straightened with a small grunt. The opening held only the dark shape of his legs before he stepped away.

Ethan let his head fall back until he could see the canopy. A piece of sky showed between leaves and the upper edge of the rock. He had never needed a roof here. From the path, the seam looked shallow and awkward, mostly shadow. Inside, the bend tucked him far enough back that a reaching hand couldn't turn the corner.

Hannah followed his gaze. "Oh."

"What?"

"I thought it went under."

"Under what?"

"The rock. Like a little cave."

He shook his head. "Nope."

She looked up again. A leaf shifted against the sky. He could see her understanding the shape now, the air passing through instead of sitting around them. She loosened her shoulders and stopped keeping both arms quite so close to her chest.

"You could've said that."

"I did."

"You said I'd fit."

He considered his previous salesmanship. That sounded entirely possible. He'd mostly wanted her to stop calling a very good hiding place disgusting.

"Okay. It's open at the top."

"Bit late."

"Helpful for next time."

She gave him a look. He grinned at her, and this time she smiled properly before returning her attention to the ground.

A twig had caught across one of her laces. She lifted her foot to shake it loose, missed, and bent to remove it. Ethan moved the light so she could see. The thing was smaller than the complaint she made about it.

"You have leaves in your hair," she told him when she straightened.

"Where?"

She reached up, plucked something from his curls, and held it in front of his face. It wasn't a leaf. It was a tiny broken stalk.

"That's decorative," he said.

She dropped it beside his shoe. "You're welcome."

Footsteps spread outside. Lucia's voice came from farther down the rise, asking whether they'd found him. Tyler answered without needing to shout. Ethan couldn't hear every word, but his own name and Ryan's irritated laugh carried clearly.

Hannah leaned toward the opening. "Is Katie still out?"

"As far as I know."

"So three."

"Yeah."

She looked pleased enough that he didn't point out what three remaining hiders meant against the rest of them. Connor, Noah, and Sophie had been caught. He'd seen enough of the switching sides to know the woods were getting crowded.

They hadn't started with this many people looking for his crevice. The advantage had become a place to breathe, not a way to win by waiting until everyone else got bored.

Hannah braced one hand against the cleanest-looking part of the wall and crouched. "I'm sitting down for a second."

"You said it was disgusting."

"My legs don't care."

He sat too, carefully, on the dry edge where the ground rose. One knee stayed bent high enough that he could rest his forearm on it. Hannah chose the patch beside him rather than across the narrow space. Their shoulders nearly touched.

For a few breaths, neither spoke. Somebody outside cracked a branch underfoot and complained. Farther away, a car passed through the neighborhood, its tires sounding briefly smoother than everything around them. The woods hadn't swallowed the houses. Ethan could still hear Friday happening beyond the trees.

Hannah picked something off her sock. "I'm telling Mom you made me."

"You came in yourself."

"Because you went in first."

"You could've stayed with Tyler."

She laughed. "And lose?"

"Exactly."

He knocked his shoulder gently against hers. She pushed back harder, making him readjust his foot before he tipped against the stone. It was a very Hannah way to accept a point without saying he'd made one.

"This isn't that bad," she said eventually.

He turned toward her too fast. She held up a finger before he could speak.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You're going to be annoying about it."

"I could be."

"You will be."

He let the grin happen. There was no point denying that. She rolled her eyes and leaned back without touching the damp patch behind her. A small space, enough air, two filthy shoes pointing toward the opening. She'd spent years refusing it, and now she was here beside him.

"You can still hate it," he said.

"I don't hate it. I hate that you're right."

"That must happen a lot."

She shoved him again. He laughed out loud, and Tyler immediately called through the opening.

"Having fun in there?"

"More than you," Ethan answered.

"Come out and find out."

Hannah leaned forward. "Move back first."

The woods went quieter around that. Ethan looked at her. She knew the rule. Of course she knew the rule; she'd heard them argue about it enough times. Still, the fact that she was calling for the next part herself caught him pleasantly off guard.

"We're not staying," she added. "You have to move."

"We know," Tyler said.

Ryan muttered something. Lucia laughed, then told him to get up from wherever he'd put himself. Leaves shuffled outside. Ethan stood, brushing his palms on his shorts, and offered Hannah his hand.

She took it. He pulled only until she was upright, then she used his arm to keep him there while she checked the back of her shirt.

"Is there anything on me?"

"A little dirt."

"Anything moving."

He aimed the light at her shoulder, then down. Nothing moving. He told her so. She accepted that and brushed the dirt off herself, missing the part she couldn't reach.

He brushed that patch with the side of his hand. She didn't thank him, just turned enough to make it easier.

"I used to think you sat in here laughing at everybody," she said.

"Sometimes."

"The whole time."

"Gets boring."

She glanced toward the opening. "You never said that part."

He shrugged. Outside, Noah's voice joined the others. Ethan heard him ask whether anybody had checked the higher path, then Natalie answering from somewhere behind the first group. Neither gave away a place they'd shared with former teammates. They were talking about where seekers had already looked.

Hannah traced a groove in the stone without pressing against the lichen. Ethan remembered her waiting near the porch in shoes she'd chosen because somebody had mentioned going out, pretending she hadn't been listening for the decision. Tonight she'd made it all the way to his hiding place with him.

He'd liked bringing her. Not carrying her through the game. Having her next to him, complaining about the exact same rock he'd defended for years.

"I'm glad you came," he said.

She looked at him, expression briefly open. "Me too."

Then she wiped her hand on his shirt.

"Hannah!"

"Dirt."

"I can see that."

She laughed, and he caught her wrist too late to prevent the second wipe. His shirt had already been through enough woods that the damage barely showed. He complained anyway. She wasn't going to leave him standing there with an undefended nice sentence.

Outside, Sophie called, "You have to come out sometime."

"We're coming," Ethan said. "Where are you?"

"Back here."

"That tells me nothing."

"Walk out and look."

He laughed. Hannah leaned toward the bend, testing what she could see without entering reach. Ethan put his light away. The pale beam had been useful for bugs and shoelaces. It would mostly announce their first steps now.

The seekers were withdrawing, but not disappearing. Their voices settled beyond the small open patch below the rise. Tyler took several more steps when Marcus told him he was still too close. Ryan objected to Tyler's idea of distance, then had to move himself.

"About twenty feet," Natalie said. "Not to the next neighborhood."

Ethan could picture her expression without seeing it. He pressed his mouth shut against another laugh, then looked at Hannah. She was already watching the opening instead of the walls.

Their voices outside had begun to sound different. Not louder, just farther from the opening, with more of the night between each word. Ethan bent enough to look around the stone. He could see Tyler's shoes and the lower half of Sophie's legs. Ryan stood beside a tree well beyond the entrance, no longer close enough to reach either sibling as they stepped out.

Hannah crouched beside him. Her shoulder bumped his, and he moved a little so she could have the better angle. She took her time looking, then pulled back into the widened part of the gap.

"I can see Lucia," she whispered.

"Where?"

"By Sophie."

He looked again and found her. That made the lower path less promising, but promising wasn't everything. He wanted to move. His legs had stopped feeling quite so heavy, and standing here listening to Ryan complain had begun to make him itch in a different way from Hannah's imagined bugs.

A laugh came from beyond the nearest trees. Connor, probably. Ethan couldn't see him, and didn't give the guess enough weight to turn it into a person blocking an exit. He knew the bend outside led back toward familiar neighborhood paths, away from the northern boundary and the tunnel nobody needed to enter. There was enough game left on the ground they were actually allowed to use.

Hannah rubbed her palms against her shorts. "I'm not coming back in."

"You haven't even left yet."

"I mean when they chase us."

"Yeah. Me neither."

She looked surprised. He shrugged. The crevice was fun because it made everybody mad and then made him run again. Turning it into the whole evening would mostly mean listening to his friends have fun somewhere he couldn't see.

"We got a break," he added.

"A dirty break."

"You're going to say that all night, aren't you?"

She smiled. "Probably."

He shook his head and offered his fist. She knocked hers against it without making him wait, then bent toward the opening again. He could feel the little collision in his knuckles after she moved away. An ordinary thing they could do inside a place she'd never wanted to share with him before tonight.

"Which way are you going?" he asked softly.

"Which way are you going?"

"Down."

"They're down."

"I'm going to complain about that."

She gave him a small, breathless laugh. Then she shook her head and looked toward the strip of sky again, apparently lining up the opening with the path beyond.

"I might go around the top."

"Okay."

"Don't come after me."

"I'm still hiding."

"I meant follow."

He lifted both hands. She was picking her own way out. He could want to keep running with her and still move his stupid elbows so she could get past.

They worked back through the bend sideways, no quick leap available. Hannah went first, one hand against dry stone. Ethan stayed a pace behind her. At the narrowest point, she stopped to free her shirt from a twig rather than pull it loose.

"Give me a second."

"You've got one."

He held the twig while she moved. It released with no dramatic tear, no rescue required. Outside, the waiting feet stayed where they were. Their temporary refuge had bought them breath and a chance to choose again. That was enough.

Hannah stepped into the night air. Ethan followed and straightened beside her, the trees suddenly farther from his shoulders. Several shapes waited below, with Tyler's light pointed at the ground between them. Ryan had his hands on his hips. Sophie stood beside Lucia, smiling.

Ethan caught Tyler's eye and stuck his tongue out.

"Oh, you're done," Tyler said.

"Catch me, then."

Hannah touched Ethan's elbow once. "Top."

He nodded toward the lower path. "Down."

It was nine twenty-two when they separated, Hannah slipping around the higher shoulder of the rise while Ethan went the other way. Behind them, Ryan shouted, and the waiting feet began to move.

Ethan got three steps downhill before Ryan came after him.

He heard the scrape of a shoe, Tyler saying something that sounded like a complaint, and then the heavier succession of feet behind him. He stayed on the path. The first turn was too tight to take at full speed, especially with the ground loose at its outer edge. Ethan shortened his stride, rounded it, and let himself run properly once the trees opened.

"You had a rest!" Ryan called.

"So did you!"

"I was standing!"

Ethan laughed, which was an expensive thing to do halfway through the next climb. He made himself breathe instead. The crevice had cooled his shirt and settled his legs enough that they felt ready until he asked them to accelerate again. Then the evening returned: every abrupt turn, every short uphill burst, the place his left shoe had started rubbing beneath the ankle.

Hannah was out of sight. He didn't turn toward the upper route to check. She'd told him what she wanted to do, and looking back wouldn't make it easier for her. He took the fork toward the flatter ground, ducked beneath the branch he could actually see, and heard Ryan catch it with a hand behind him.

The noise gave him a few yards.

Not enough to stop.

At the next opening, a light moved across the path ahead. Ethan veered onto the connecting branch before he saw who held it. Someone called his name from the wrong side of the trees, and he grinned despite his breathing. He still had choices. That was the pleasure of it: not being fast everywhere, just reaching a turn while it was still a turn instead of a place somebody could touch him.

The branch brought him out near Katie.

She was standing with one hand on a trunk, her head turned toward the route behind her. She saw him, glanced past him, and pushed away immediately.

"Don't bring him here."

"Too late."

"Who?"

"Ryan."

She swore, then laughed as they ran together. Ethan stayed on her right through the wider stretch. He hadn't seen anybody from close enough to talk since leaving the rocks, and the brief company made him want to tell her about Hannah sitting inside his supposedly disgusting hiding place. It could wait until he didn't have to choose between a sentence and the next breath.

"Hannah?" Katie asked.

"Still in."

"Good."

The path divided ahead. Katie chose the branch toward the sidewalk. Ethan went with her for several strides before catching the pale edge of Tyler's shirt beside the next opening.

"Katie—"

She'd seen him too. She checked her speed, turned back toward Ethan, and found Ryan coming around the bend behind them. For a second they were all looking at one another, the evening condensed into four people and a stretch of dirt nobody could make wider.

Katie tried the space to Tyler's left. He moved with her without lunging, blocking only as much path as his body occupied. She stopped before colliding with him, made a quick turn on the firmer ground, and nearly got past.

His hand touched the top of her arm.

"Got you."

"Fuck." She looked down at the spot, then up at him. "I know. I felt it."

Ethan hadn't waited for the conversation. He'd taken the other branch as soon as Ryan's attention shifted toward Katie, clearing the fork while there was still space. Behind him, Tyler called the capture. Katie's objection carried after it, not to the tag, apparently to whatever expression Tyler was making.

Two.

Him and Hannah.

He wanted her to hear the announcement. He also wanted her not to shout back, which she might do if she was pleased enough. He listened for her voice and heard nothing.

The ground levelled. Ethan slowed to a quick walk, then stopped where two thick trunks broke the view from the branch he'd used. He put a hand against one, feeling the rough bark under his palm, and let his breathing catch up with the rest of him.

Somewhere behind the trees, Ryan asked Tyler which way he'd gone.

"I was looking at Katie."

"So was I."

"That explains it, then," Katie said.

Ethan pressed his mouth shut. He could hear all three too clearly to risk laughing. Katie had joined them now, however irritated she was about it. She knew she'd been beside him on this branch. That didn't mean she could tell Ryan where she'd last seen him.

Her next words were about finding her light.

He stayed until the voices separated. A beam passed over the turn and moved on. His heart was still working hard, but the burning in his legs had eased enough that he could feel the ordinary ache beneath it. He checked the time with the screen sheltered against his shirt.

Nine twenty-six.

They'd been playing for over an hour. Ryan had proposed it as though it would take twenty minutes and end with everybody conveniently thirsty in the same place. Ethan could have pointed that out. Later, preferably while Ryan was sitting down and unable to chase him for saying it.

He put the phone away and left the trees.

At the sidewalk, he checked both directions before stepping out. Nobody nearby. A television played through a window, and farther along somebody was putting a bin against the side of their house. Ethan passed at a walk, trying to look like a person with somewhere sensible to go rather than a twenty-year-old hiding from his brother.

The person with the bin looked up.

"Evening."

"Hi."

"You kids still at it?"

"Apparently."

The answering laugh followed him toward the corner. He smiled back without stopping. Not everybody needed the rules explained to recognize what was happening when familiar voices started shouting down the street.

He could take the next crossing and go back through the lower paths. He could keep to the sidewalk and find another opening farther along. He could stand here deciding until somebody came around the corner and relieved him of the problem.

A light flickered against the parked cars behind him.

He kept walking.

Then Lucia said his name.

Ethan turned enough to see her. She was perhaps fifteen yards back, one hand around the little light, the other lifting as though she wanted him to stop for a perfectly ordinary conversation. He'd hugged her less than two hours ago. At this distance, her smile was still unmistakable.

"No," he said.

She laughed and ran.

He went toward the next corner, feet finding a rhythm on the pavement. It would have been easier if he'd been running fresh, easier if he hadn't already spent his best acceleration escaping Ryan. He still opened a gap. Lucia wasn't trying to match him step for step; he heard her take the shorter curve behind him and remembered, too late, that she'd always been good at knowing where people intended to turn.

He stayed on the sidewalk instead of crossing. A car came through the intersection. Lucia slowed too, and for a few seconds the chase became two people waiting on the same safe side of a road while an entirely uninvolved driver went past.

"Don't," Ethan told her, backing another step along the pavement.

"Don't what?"

"Look that pleased."

She only smiled harder.

The car cleared. Ethan took the path entrance at the corner, making the turn cleanly, and found Emily several yards ahead.

"Oh, shit."

Emily raised both hands, delighted to be chosen by circumstance. He checked his speed before reaching her and turned onto the connecting loop instead. It wasn't a trap if he could still get through it. His body disagreed briefly with the change of direction, one calf tightening, then released when he shortened his next two steps.

Lucia had seen the loop.

She didn't follow him around its outer curve. She came through the short junction toward the point where it rejoined, arriving while Ethan was still trying to bring his feet beneath him after the bend.

He almost made it.

Her fingertips caught his sleeve near the shoulder. Then her palm touched his arm, clear enough that neither of them had to argue about fabric.

Ethan stopped.

"Got you," she said, breathless.

He looked at her hand before she lowered it. "Yeah."

She bent forward laughing. He stood with both hands on his hips, staring at the short path she had used, then laughed too. The route hadn't changed. He'd known it was there, known what she'd done to Connor, and still chosen the bend because the wider trail looked easier from the approach.

"I saw you thinking about it," Lucia said.

"That's annoying."

"You looked right at it."

"I know." He leaned against the nearest trunk. "I was busy."

Emily arrived at a walk. "Did you get him?"

Lucia nodded, still catching her breath.

"Ethan's caught!" Emily called.

The answer came from farther away. Tyler, immediately. Ethan could hear the satisfaction in his voice even without making out every word. He lifted one hand toward the general direction, offering a gesture his brother couldn't see.

Then he remembered Hannah.

"Who's left?" Emily asked.

"Hannah," Lucia said.

Ethan grinned before he could keep it off his face. Emily saw and nudged his arm.

"Where did she go?"

He looked at her.

"Right," she said immediately. "Forget I asked."

He wouldn't have told her even if the question had sounded less accidental. He could remember his sister choosing the upper route without offering it to eleven people who'd now be trying to find her. Knowing something and being allowed to use it weren't the same part of the game.

Lucia straightened. "Give me a minute."

"Take two," Ethan said.

"You'd like that."

"Very much."

She laughed and stayed beside him while Emily went back toward the sidewalk. Ethan didn't need to run again immediately. He was a seeker now. He could walk, listen, choose where to look without turning his own breathing into everybody else's clue.

At nine thirty-one, he left the trunk.

They followed the lower path together, Lucia carrying the light while Ethan watched the gaps between trees. He didn't lead her toward the rise. He chose a stretch they'd both just used and let it become a place to look afresh. Hannah could have changed direction three times since they'd separated.

He hoped she had.

Marcus met them at the wider fork. Natalie came from the other branch with Noah behind her, his glasses pushed up with one finger. Everybody looked a little less composed than they had beside the gate.

"Just Hannah?" Marcus asked.

Ethan nodded.

Noah looked at him. "She beat you."

"She hasn't been caught yet."

"So she beat you."

"Yeah." Ethan couldn't stop smiling. "She did."

Natalie asked which paths they'd already checked. Lucia answered about the ground they'd covered since the tag, not where Ethan had been hiding earlier. Marcus pointed toward the wider trail and went that way. Noah followed after tugging his shirt away from his back.

"I'm walking," he announced.

"Nobody asked you to sprint," Natalie said.

"I'm establishing it now."

They went, still talking quietly enough that Ethan lost the words almost at once. He and Lucia took the branch toward the little bridge. They'd heard Emily's voice down there earlier. It felt like much longer ago than the phone said.

Halfway down the shallow slope, he heard Ryan shout.

Not a capture. A name.

"Hannah!"

Ethan stopped beside Lucia. Through the trees to their left, Hannah came into view on the higher connecting path, running hard enough that her hair had come loose around her face. Ryan followed several yards behind. She wasn't coming toward them. She was heading for the fork.

"Oh, come on," Ethan whispered, smiling.

Lucia glanced at him.

He kept his mouth shut after that. He wasn't going to shout directions. He wasn't going to stand in the path pretending to block Ryan. His sister had made it this far without him holding her sleeve; he could watch her finish without trying to arrange it.

She reached the fork ahead of Ryan and chose the bridge.

He slowed on the boards instead of running across the narrowest part directly behind her. Ethan heard the hollow knock of his shoes. Hannah had already crossed, taking the wider trail on the other side rather than the steep branch toward the street.

It gave her room.

It gave Ryan room too.

Ethan and Lucia followed at a walk, far enough behind that neither interfered with the chase. Ryan was gaining. Hannah looked back once, caught her balance when the glance cost her a step, and kept going. Beyond the bend, Marcus appeared at the branch joining from the right.

Hannah saw him before reaching it. She slowed, chose the open left-hand curve, and made Ryan turn with her instead of running straight into Marcus's reach.

Ethan laughed aloud.

Ryan had to recover the same turn. He did it better than Ethan wanted him to, closing the distance again while Hannah's shorter strides kept her moving along the firm middle of the path.

She reached the next wide patch.

Ryan caught her there, one hand touching the back of her shoulder without pushing. Hannah stopped in two steps, turned, and pointed at him while trying to breathe enough to speak.

"I—"

"Got you," Ryan said.

"I know."

He bent with his hands on his knees. Hannah stayed upright longer than he did, apparently out of spite, then gave up and braced one hand against a trunk.

Ethan came around the bend with Lucia beside him.

Hannah looked at his face. "Last?"

"Last."

Her grin arrived before she'd recovered enough air to say anything else. Ethan went to her, stopped close enough that she could choose the contact, and accepted the hard, brief hug she threw at him. Sweat, leaves, her light pressing against his hip from inside her pocket.

"I won," she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

"You won."

She let him go so she could look at Ryan. "I won."

Ryan nodded from his knees. "Heard you."

She laughed, delighted, and called the news herself when Tyler's voice reached them from the other branch.

"It was me!"

The reunion happened unevenly. Marcus called for the others. Natalie arrived with Noah, then Sophie and Emily came around the bend talking over each other. Katie followed Tyler, who looked at Hannah, looked at Ethan, and immediately understood which complaint would get him the least sympathy.

"You let her beat you?"

"No," Ethan said.

"He didn't," Lucia added.

Hannah folded her arms.

Tyler held up a hand. "Okay. You beat him."

"And Katie."

"And me," Katie said, taking a place beside Sophie. "Unfortunately."

Connor arrived last, answering Marcus's call with his own much louder one before appearing through the trees. Twelve again. Ethan counted without meaning to, only because the voices had been separate for so long and were finally coming from bodies he could see.

Nobody wanted another round.

Ryan asked anyway and received several answers at once, none encouraging. Noah sat on the low edge beside the path. Natalie sat near him without commenting on whether it was clean. Emily offered Sophie the water bottle she'd fetched from her bag during the later part of the game; Sophie drank, passed it back, and asked whose idea running uphill had been.

Everybody pointed somewhere different.

Hannah stood beside Ethan while Katie picked a burr off her sock. Tyler came around behind them and laid a hand against Ethan's neck again, warm and irritatingly familiar.

Ethan ducked away. "Not now."

"Tired?"

"Sweaty."

"I noticed."

"Then use your own shirt."

Tyler laughed and wiped his hand on Ethan's shoulder anyway. Ethan pushed him hard enough to move him a step, not hard enough to start something his legs would object to finishing.

Lucia stood beside Sophie, listening to Noah describe the railway gate with both hands. Natalie corrected one detail. Noah insisted it wasn't the important one. Ethan let the conversation carry on without joining it. He could finally listen to something without deciding which direction to run.

Hannah nudged him. "Tell them."

"What?"

"The crevice."

He looked at her. She was smiling, no longer concerned about keeping the admission private.

"She went in," he told Katie.

Katie turned. "Really?"

"For the first time."

"And survived," Hannah added.

Tyler made a noise that would have earned him another shove if Ethan hadn't agreed with it. Hannah told him it was much less disgusting than Ethan's descriptions, which wasn't what she'd said inside but was close enough that he let her have it.

Sophie came nearer and touched Hannah's arm. "Good night, then?"

Hannah looked around at all of them. "Yeah."

Ethan wanted water. He wanted somewhere to sit that didn't require choosing the cleanest part of a rock. He wanted Lucia to finish the hundred questions she'd promised him, wanted to hear Katie's version of getting caught, wanted Noah to stop demonstrating the crossing before Natalie corrected the angle of his hand.

He didn't want to go back inside yet.

"Hangout?" Connor asked.

Sophie nodded immediately. Marcus checked the time, and Hannah took out her phone to send a message home. Ethan did the same, telling Rose they were finished with the game and going to sit with everybody for a while. He put it away after sending, before the screen could turn the evening into somewhere else he ought to be.

They set off together, slower than they'd arrived. Katie walked with Connor. Natalie stayed beside Noah, their disagreement finally giving way to whether anybody had brought something salty. Emily and Sophie moved ahead of Ethan with Lucia between them. Ryan and Marcus trailed close enough that he could hear Ryan complaining about his knees.

Tyler put an arm around Hannah. She tolerated it until he said something Ethan couldn't hear, then elbowed him away and came to walk beside her other brother.

"You have dirt on your shirt," she told Ethan.

"You put it there."

"Some of it."

He laughed and let his shoulder bump hers. Ahead, the familiar path curved toward the place they were all going, and for once nobody needed to get there first.

The hangout appeared first as a patch of darker ground beyond the turn, then as the low, slanting shape of the log Ethan had been planning to sit on for the last ten minutes. He aimed his light at its near end. The bark was gone from most of the top, worn down to gray wood by weather and years of people putting their asses in the same place. A cluster of pale mushrooms had taken over the opposite end. Katie got there before him, inspected the growth, and moved two feet to the left.

"Don't eat those," Connor said.

She looked up at him. "I was about to," she said sarcastically.

"I know you."

"You know absolutely nothing." She sat, winced at something beneath her, and reached behind herself to remove a twig. "Ow. Fuck."

Ethan laughed and dropped beside her. His legs accepted the decision so completely that standing again immediately became somebody else's problem. Hannah sat on his other side, keeping enough space between them to inspect her trousers for whatever she'd brought out of the crevice. Tyler took the higher end of the log and leaned back on his hands. Within seconds he was telling Ryan that he should've checked the upper branch earlier, as though he'd been directing the game from somewhere other than the wrong end of it.

The clearing was smaller than Ethan remembered and no smaller than it had been the last time. Ferns had pushed over the narrow entrance. The stones around the old bare patch were still there, some almost swallowed by leaves, but nobody bothered with them. They hadn't lit a fire here in years. With the lights turned toward the ground, there was enough illumination to find knees and bottles without making the woods beyond disappear entirely. A streetlamp showed through a gap farther downhill; traffic came through as a distant, steady sound.

Marcus picked up a fallen branch from the middle and carried it off the seating patch. Natalie put her light on a flat stone, tested the angle, and left it pointed across the dirt. Noah sat in the beam.

"Move that a little," he said.

She turned it away from his eyes. "Better?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Lucia settled on the stone beside him with an audible breath. Sophie stayed standing, pulling leaves from Emily's hair while Emily tried to find the end of a knot in her shoelace. Ryan shook out his legs, looked around at everybody else sitting down, and finally abandoned the attempt to appear less tired.

"I'm hungry," he announced.

Several people agreed. Ethan's stomach joined them late and enthusiastically. They'd eaten at the house before the game; that had stopped feeling relevant sometime on the last hill. He looked at the water bottle Emily was holding and decided to ask when she finished with it.

"We left stuff in the kitchen," Sophie said. "Rose said take it when we came back."

Tyler lifted his head. "Why didn't we go back?"

"Because Connor said hangout and you started walking."

"Everybody started walking."

"I'll go," Emily said, giving up on the lace for the moment. "I need my other shoes anyway."

Ryan pushed himself upright before he'd properly sat. "I'll come."

"Bring water," Noah told them.

"Anything else?" Emily asked.

"Chips."

"Sweatshirt," Hannah said. "Mine's on the chair by the door."

Tyler started describing a particular bag of pretzels. Emily cut him off by pointing at Sophie, who was already taking out her phone.

"Send it to her. I'm not remembering twelve things."

Ethan finally held up a hand for the bottle. Emily passed it over and waited while he drank, then took it back and shoved it into her pocket. She and Ryan left together, their lights moving across the entrance before the bend hid them. He could hear Ryan asking which kitchen cupboard for longer than he could see either of them.

Hannah tucked her hands beneath her thighs. The air was cooling against the sweat on Ethan's back too, not cold so much as suddenly interested in every damp patch of his shirt. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and rubbed a thumb over the dirt on his palm. When he looked up, Marcus was watching the entrance.

"They'll be ten minutes," Tyler said.

"Probably." Marcus sat on a broad, low stone. "I was just looking."

Connor found a place on the ground beside Katie's feet and tipped his head back against the log. She immediately moved one shoe away from his shoulder. He caught the toe, let go when she nudged him, and began picking grit out of the grooves in his own sole.

It had been a long time since Ethan had seen everybody become comfortable here. Not pose for a photograph, not squeeze in a quick hello before someone had to leave. Get comfortable. He watched Noah take off his glasses to clean them on the inside of his shirt, watched Sophie lower herself beside Lucia, watched Hannah discover she'd been sitting on the corner of her phone and move it into her lap. Nobody had to explain where the level ground was.

"It's leaning more," Natalie said, looking at the log.

Tyler rocked once, gently. Ethan felt the movement under him and put a hand on the wood.

"Don't."

"I wasn't doing anything."

"You were doing that."

Tyler stopped, smiling. Katie leaned down to look underneath. A root had lifted the far end slightly; the near end was sunk deeper into the ground. She straightened and declared it fine without volunteering to sit where the mushrooms were.

Hannah followed her gaze. "Did you all actually fit on this?"

"Some of us sat on the ground," Sophie said.

"Some of us got pushed onto the ground," Noah added.

Tyler looked innocent for about half a second. Ethan reached behind Hannah to shove his knee, and Tyler caught his wrist. The familiar struggle lasted until Hannah lifted both her elbows and told them she was still between them. Tyler let go. Ethan sat back with an entirely undeserved sense of victory.

He'd spent afternoons here with shoes wet from the stream and nothing pressing except whether Rose expected him back before dinner. Sometimes somebody brought a bag of sweets and passed it around until everybody pretended not to know who'd taken the last one. Sometimes they argued about music for forty minutes and never actually played any. The clearing wasn't better than anybody's bedroom. It was just outside the houses, far enough away that they could be loud without an adult calling down the stairs.

"Remember that board?" Connor asked suddenly.

Katie laughed before he'd finished pointing. "Oh my God."

"What board?" Hannah asked.

"The one we tried to put between the rocks," Ethan said. "Like a bench."

"Was a bench," Tyler said.

"It lasted an afternoon."

"It was a good afternoon."

Sophie covered her mouth, smiling. "You fell through it."

"After somebody jumped on it."

Ethan looked toward Katie. She lifted a shoulder and returned her attention to her sock. There was a thorn caught in the knit; she worked it free carefully, without supplying the defense Tyler clearly wanted from her.

Hannah grinned. "Did you get hurt?"

"No," Tyler said.

"He walked home holding his butt," Connor told her.

"I had a splinter."

Hannah lost the fight with her laughter. Ethan did too, partly because Tyler reached around her to smack his arm and missed. Noah laughed quietly while Natalie asked whether that was the board somebody had dragged out of a shed. Three people said yes, two said no, and Sophie said the important part was that none of them had been allowed to bring it back into the yard afterward.

They weren't recreating the afternoon. Katie didn't get up and jump on anything. Tyler stayed where he was, laughing with them after a moment, and Connor never bothered to finish cleaning his shoe. The memory passed between them with details falling off and returning in the wrong order. Ethan could still see Tyler coming through the back door sideways, trying to answer Rose's question without naming the part of his body that hurt.

"Mom knew," Hannah said.

"Mom always knew," Tyler answered.

"Not always." Ethan regretted saying it as soon as four faces turned toward him.

"What'd you get away with?" Katie asked.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

"I'm taking it back."

"No, go on." Tyler leaned forward past Hannah. "I'd love to hear this."

Ethan shook his head, laughing, and reached for Hannah's phone when she tilted it toward him. Rose had replied to her message. Emily and Ryan were there; the sweatshirt was coming. Underneath, Rose wanted to know whether Hannah had water.

"Coming," Hannah said, already typing.

Ethan's own phone buzzed a moment later. He expected the same question and found a photograph from Rose instead: Ryan standing in the kitchen with a bulging shopping bag in each hand, looking put-upon while Emily held a sleeve up against him. His mother's message underneath said they were taking the warm things as well.

He showed it to Tyler. Tyler leaned across Hannah, made her complain again, and laughed at the expression on Ryan's face. Hannah demanded the picture, so Ethan sent it to her and then put his phone away. He didn't need to answer with a report. Rose knew they were together.

"So Kit really knew her before any of you did?" Katie asked, looking between Ethan and Tyler.

"He was her landlord," Ethan said. "Back in '04. Drove her to the hospital when I was born, too."

"And none of you knew?"

"Not until tonight," Tyler said. "You should've seen Ethan's face."

"It wasn't exactly calm," Hannah said.

"I was processing."

"You said 'wait, what' about four times."

Ethan laughed. "It was weird. Good weird, I think. Just a lot to find out at once." He looked toward the path leading back to the house. "Kit didn't know he'd end up raising me. None of them knew how it would turn out."

"That's kind of incredible," Lucia said.

"Yeah," Ethan said. "It is."

"Is Maddie still up?" Sophie asked him.

"Probably. She and Mom were talking when we left."

"How's she doing?"

"Good, I think." He paused, choosing the part he could actually answer. "She seemed good."

Sophie nodded. She didn't ask him to translate the whole day. Lucia looked over, interested, but let Connor interrupt with a question about whether any of the food was still warm. Ethan was glad. He wanted to talk; he didn't want to start by deciding what belonged to him to repeat.

Marcus leaned back against the tree behind his stone. "My mom asked if you were coming Sunday."

"Yeah."

"She said don't fill up somewhere else first."

"Tell her I won't."

"You say that now."

Ethan smiled. He remembered being seventeen and arriving at somebody's house with the confidence that he could eat two dinners if neither set of parents knew about the other. He could still do it after a long enough run. Tonight, he was ready to accept whatever came up the path.

Natalie asked Marcus about getting back for the start of the week. He answered, and the conversation widened into buses, lifts, bags still unpacked, a charger left in somebody else's room. Hannah listened without trying to interrupt. Ethan caught himself checking the time and stopped halfway through raising his wrist; there wasn't a watch there, and nobody had given him a deadline.

Noah had a book he hadn't opened. Sophie had three things she meant to wash before she packed again. Tyler was certain he'd remembered everything, which prompted Hannah to mention the clean pile still on his floor at home. Connor said laundry could wait until he got back. Katie looked at him long enough that he added, "Some of it."

Ethan let his head tip back. Through the branches, a small piece of sky looked washed out rather than black. His breathing had finally stopped sounding like work. He could hear Natalie and Noah disagreeing about how much reading counted as a head start, then Sophie telling them she didn't want to think about any of it for another hour.

"Fair," Noah said.

That ended the argument more effectively than either of them winning would have. Natalie reached over and took a leaf off his shoulder. He thanked her without noticing until she held it up where he could see it.

The returning lights came from below. Ryan's first announcement was that he'd carried the heavier bag, followed by Emily saying he had chosen it. They entered together, and Ethan saw that he'd brought the extra layer Rose had offered whether he intended to wear it or not. Emily had changed shoes. She set her bag on the flat stone and began handing things out before everybody could get up and make the clearing impossible to move through.

"Your mom fed us again," she told Ethan.

"While you were there?"

"She said we looked hungry."

Ryan lowered the second bag. "We were hungry."

"Then she gave us all this." Emily lifted a lidded container. "Pasta and vegetables. Rose said you'd probably want some."

"Oh, hell yes," Ethan said, reaching for it.

She laughed and passed it over. Pasta, vegetables, the faint warmth of something that had spent the game on the counter rather than becoming a new meal. Rose had put a fork under the elastic holding the lid. Ethan freed it and balanced the container on his knees. Lucia accepted another; Sophie offered her a napkin before she asked.

Hannah pulled on her sweatshirt without standing. Her hair caught at the collar, and she worked it free, then stretched one sleeve across Ethan's arm as if he'd been measuring the cold for her.

"Better?" he asked.

"Yes." She reached for a bottle. "I'm still hungry."

Tyler handed her the pretzels he'd insisted on. She took the bag, looked at him, and kept it. Ethan laughed around a mouthful and almost lost a piece of pasta. Katie leaned away immediately.

"Don't you fucking dare."

He swallowed. "Sorry."

"You're not."

"No."

She stole a pepper from his container in retaliation, waiting until he'd moved the fork out of the way. Connor asked her to open the crackers. She handed them down; he struggled with the seam, split it too far, and caught three escaping crackers in his lap. Marcus moved the open bag away from the sloping edge before more followed.

Ryan found a place opposite Hannah and raised his bottle toward her. "Good game."

She touched hers to it. "Thank you."

"Still caught you."

"After everybody else."

He smiled and let that stand. Tyler began to say something, thought better of it when Lucia looked at him, and drank instead. Ethan liked the small pause more than another argument. His sister had already told them she won. She didn't need to prove it for the rest of the night.

"Can we get a picture?" Hannah asked.

Emily was already reaching for her phone. "Yeah. Come over here."

"Everybody," Hannah said, when Tyler stayed where he was.

He put his bottle down and stood, dragging a little as his legs straightened. Ethan laughed at him until he had to do the same. Katie offered a hand, and he took it, pulling her up with him rather than accepting the help she hadn't actually meant to give. She elbowed him in the ribs. They shuffled toward the flatter patch while Emily tested the camera and Sophie held a light high enough to show faces.

"Not like that," Noah said, blinking.

Sophie lowered it. For a moment everybody disappeared into the screen's grainy preview; then Natalie moved the other light to the rock behind Emily, and their faces came back less sharply. Hannah squeezed into the front between Katie and Marcus. Tyler put both hands on Ethan's shoulders and leaned on him hard enough that Ethan had to brace.

"Stand on your own feet."

"I am."

"Then why are you so heavy?"

Emily took the photograph before Tyler could answer. She lowered the phone and started laughing, which Ethan took as a warning. Ryan reached for it, saw the screen, and laughed too.

"What?" Hannah asked.

"My eyes are closed," Connor said from beside Katie. He hadn't even seen it yet.

They were. So were Ethan's, though he'd been busy turning to bite Tyler's wrist and couldn't pretend surprise. Marcus had looked down to make sure Hannah wasn't standing on the loose edge of a stone. Sophie was still holding the light out of the frame, her whole arm stretched above her head.

"We need you in it," Hannah told Emily.

Emily looked for somewhere to prop the phone. Noah found a shallow notch between two stones, tested it without letting go, and then set the timer. Everybody waited for him to join them. Ethan moved sideways to make room; Tyler finally stopped using his shoulders as furniture and hooked an arm around him instead. Lucia fitted herself between Sophie and Natalie, accepting the awkward angle without trying to see her own reflection.

This time nobody said anything clever. They watched the little flash count down, shifted when Connor's shoe slipped, and laughed just as the photograph happened. Hannah ran to check it before any of them had properly separated.

"That one's good."

"Send it," Marcus said.

She handed Emily the phone, then came back to Ethan long enough to catch the front of his shirt and straighten the collar Tyler had pulled sideways. Ethan held still, smiling. There was dirt under her nails. He remembered her insisting on being in old photographs when she'd barely reached their elbows; tonight nobody had needed to pull her into the frame.

For a while the loudest sound was packaging. Emily dropped a wrapper into the empty shopping bag and pushed it within reach of Sophie. Noah asked what was in the blue container. Natalie read the label on its lid, realized she'd been handed it upside down, and turned it before answering. Lucia made a pleased sound over her first bite and settled more heavily against the stone.

Ethan ate until the sharp edge of his hunger went away. He could feel the cooling evening properly now: at his ears, the backs of his hands, the damp cotton between his shoulders. Ryan tossed the spare sweatshirt toward him without interrupting his own conversation. It landed partly on Katie's head.

She pulled it off and hit Ethan with it.

"Wrong person!" he said, laughing.

"Closest person."

He set the container aside, put the sweatshirt on, and leaned over her to shove Ryan's shoulder when he bent for the crackers. Ryan laughed and shoved back. Sophie told them to leave the food alone, then had to duck when Tyler tried to pass a bottle over her head.

They settled again unevenly, not because somebody called for quiet but because eating required hands and their bodies had finally noticed the evening's mileage. Ethan stretched his legs into the open space, careful not to put his feet near the food. Hannah moved one heel beside his. On the opposite stone Lucia caught his eye over her container and lifted her eyebrows.

"Now," she said, "I've actually sat down."

He smiled. "You promised a hundred questions."

"Maybe ninety. Running took a few out."

"Good."

She laughed and reached for the napkins. He stayed facing her, his food warm enough, his hands finally clean enough to stop noticing them, and let her choose where to begin.

Lucia's first question was whether Los Angeles really took that long to drive across. Ethan had expected something about school, or Maddie, or why he'd neglected to answer the voice message she'd sent two weeks earlier. He looked up from his food and found her watching him with her chin tucked into the collar of the sweatshirt Sophie had lent her.

"Depends where you're going."

"No, I mean if you tell me you're still in the car and it's been forty minutes."

"Usually, yeah."

"That's awful."

"It can be." He thought of the younger group in the car on the way to San Diego, everybody gradually finding a place for knees and bags and the next question. "You get used to leaving early."

"Do you?" Tyler asked from behind Hannah.

Ethan turned. "Sometimes."

His brother smiled into his bottle. Ethan pointed his fork at him and went back to Lucia before they could lose another ten minutes arguing about which of them had been late more often. She was laughing quietly, not at the drive but at how easily Tyler had pulled him out of answering.

"Are you liking it?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"I know you like the people. I meant living there."

He considered the difference while finishing the last pepper. At first he'd measured the city in places where somebody expected him: Maddie's house, Buck's, the Diaz house, campus. Now there were places he went without needing anybody else's name attached. A shop where he knew which aisle had the cheap pasta. A turn he made on a run because he liked the slope. The loft door and the sound it made when Jacob came in behind him with his keys already out.

"Yeah," he said again. "It's starting to feel normal."

Lucia nodded, accepting the answer instead of trying to make him improve it. "Good." She scraped her fork gently along the edge of her container. "I couldn't tell at first. You'd say you were busy, and I didn't know if that meant good busy or you didn't want to talk about it."

"Usually actually busy."

"And the other times?"

"Tired. Or everything was a mess." He rubbed his eyebrow. "This year's been busy, then bad busy, then good busy. January to September's been fucking whiplash."

Lucia considered that. "You could just say you're tired, you know."

"Yeah. I know. Sorry."

She lifted a hand before he could make it bigger. "I'm not giving you shit about it. I just didn't know."

He put his empty container beside his foot and let his hands rest between his knees. In the other half of the clearing, Ryan was asking Marcus about somebody they'd played against in school. Katie and Connor had opened another packet and were distributing its contents without waiting to be asked. Ordinary talk continued around Lucia's question; Ethan didn't have the whole circle looking at him.

"What about you?" he asked. "How was work?"

"Today, or all summer?"

"Both."

"Today was long." She stretched one leg and flexed her ankle. "All summer was also long, but I got paid for most of it."

He smiled. She described the last hour of her shift, somebody deciding they needed help just as she was supposed to leave, the coworker who finally told her to go because she'd already stayed late twice that week. She didn't make the story about a particularly awful customer. Mostly it had been standing, repeated questions, the clock moving slowly until the point when it started moving too fast.

"I got home and I still had to change," she said. "Then I couldn't find the shirt I wanted. I nearly came in the other one."

"You could've."

"I know. It smelled like work."

That made sense immediately. Ethan knew the particular relief of changing after a hospital day, even when his own clothes hadn't touched anything more interesting than a chair. She rubbed one palm over the stone beside her and shifted her weight again. He moved the crackers closer without interrupting.

"Are you back tomorrow?"

"No. I got the weekend."

"Whole weekend?"

"Most of it. Don't make me think about Monday yet."

"Okay."

She took a cracker. "I wanted to be here."

"I know."

"No, I mean with everybody. Not squeeze in a hello on your way out."

He looked around. Emily was listening to Marcus now, her mouth full, while Natalie had found the edge of the shopping bag and was folding it down so it would stay open. Hannah leaned forward to ask Connor something Ethan couldn't hear. His sister had found a conversation that didn't require either of her brothers to bring her into it.

"I'm here until Tuesday," he told Lucia.

"I know that too." She smiled. "I looked at the messages this time."

He laughed and nudged her shoe with his. She nudged back, careful of the food between them. For a moment they stayed that way, their feet resting almost side by side in the light.

She'd once waited an entire afternoon for him to finish a school thing because she'd wanted to walk home together and hadn't told him until afterward. He remembered coming out to find her sitting on the low wall, pretending she'd only just arrived. They'd bought something to drink and complained about the teacher all the way back. He couldn't remember the assignment now. He remembered how cross she'd been when he asked why she hadn't gone home.

"Does it feel weird?" she asked. "Maddie being here?"

"A little."

She waited.

"Good weird," he added, then stopped because that was a phrase, not really an answer. "It's different from her hearing about it. She gets to see everybody. Dad's actually making her tea instead of me telling her what he does."

Lucia glanced toward the path, as though the kitchen might be visible if she looked far enough. "She looked comfortable."

"Yeah." Ethan smiled at his hands. "I liked that."

He could tell Lucia wanted to ask more. She picked up her bottle, turned its cap a quarter of the wrong way, and corrected it. Whatever happened in the house earlier had involved other people's memories as much as his. He didn't want to reduce it to a story he performed beside a packet of crackers.

"It's been a lot," he said.

"Okay."

"I'm not trying to be vague."

"I didn't think you were." She drank and set the bottle between her feet. "We can talk tomorrow too."

He felt his shoulders settle. "Yeah."

"Or you can help me carry things and avoid my questions."

"I can do both."

She laughed, and the pressure went back into the ordinary shape of a conversation. He asked whether she'd seen Sophie much over the summer. Sophie heard her name and turned from Emily, answering before Lucia could.

"Not enough."

"I came over twice," Lucia said.

"One of those times you fell asleep."

"I was there."

Sophie smiled at her, fond rather than triumphant. "You were." She reached for Lucia's empty container and stacked it with her own. "We need to do something before I go back."

They started comparing the few days they had left, and Ethan listened without trying to volunteer everybody else's time. Emily could do one afternoon but not the morning. Lucia might be free later. Sophie wasn't sure how long packing would take. It wasn't a grand reunion plan, just three people finding a stretch of time in the gaps. He'd forgotten how much of adulthood was asking when rather than whether somebody wanted to see you.

Connor glanced over. "Are we doing something?"

"Maybe," Emily said.

"Tell me when."

"We will."

He returned to Hannah, who was explaining why he couldn't enlarge a blurry photograph and expect more detail to appear. Connor tilted the screen toward Katie for a second opinion. Katie looked, shrugged, and said the blur was probably his thumb anyway. Hannah took the phone only when he handed it to her, tapped something, and gave it back. He made a genuinely pleased sound at the difference.

Ethan smiled. Natalie caught his eye and followed his glance.

"She told him last time," she said quietly.

"He probably forgot."

"He did."

She sounded amused, not irritated. Then she asked Ethan how the internship had gone, and Lucia turned back so quickly that he laughed.

"That's on my list too," she said.

"It's good."

Natalie pointed at him with the cracker she'd just taken. "More than that."

He drew a breath and tried to start somewhere that didn't sound like an application essay. Patel's questions came to mind first, the way she could make him discover the missing step in an answer he thought he'd already finished. He told them about knowing the name of something and then having to explain why it made sense in that particular patient, about how much listening happened before anybody reached for equipment.

"She'll ask why, and I answer, and then she asks how I know."

"Do you?" Noah asked, joining them.

"Sometimes."

"And the other times?"

"I go and look it up."

Noah nodded with the satisfaction of somebody who respected that more than a miraculous answer. Natalie asked how much he was allowed to do. Ethan was glad she'd asked it that way. He didn't have to first undo the idea that standing near a surgeon made him one.

"Mostly observe and help where they actually assign me. I'm still an undergrad." He explained the ordinary jobs without apologizing for them: finding the person who knew an answer, carrying something, writing down what he'd been asked to track, learning the sequence rather than trying to put his hands into it. "It depends on the day. There's a lot I can't do."

"Do you like the boring parts?" Lucia asked.

He laughed. "Some of them."

"That's good. Everybody says they want the interesting part."

"Some of the interesting part isn't fun."

She nodded, and he left the sentence where it was. The woods weren't the place for somebody else's worst hospital day. Natalie asked about combining it with school, and he told her what he'd worked out so far, admitting where the fall schedule still wasn't settled. She listened and then confessed she'd written down three different versions of her own week and hadn't decided which one was possible.

"Show me," Noah said.

"Not now."

"I wasn't going to fix it."

She gave him a look.

"I wasn't going to fix all of it," he conceded.

Natalie laughed and finally offered him her phone. They bent over it together, quietly enough that Ethan could no longer follow the details. It was the old rhythm without the old stakes; there wasn't a rank waiting at the end of this particular argument. Noah moved a finger toward the screen, stopped before tapping anything, and asked her a question instead.

Noah looked up from the schedule. "Was transferring a pain?"

"Yeah," Ethan said, with enough feeling that Natalie laughed.

"What was the worst bit?"

"Finding out who I was supposed to ask. I'd ask one person and they'd tell me a different person, and then that person would send me back." He rubbed his forehead, remembering the tabs open on his laptop. "Some of it worked fine. Some of it took forever."

"That sounds familiar," Natalie said.

"It was worth it."

"I know. I'm asking about the actual part you had to do," Noah said. "Not whether you should've gone."

Ethan nodded. He hadn't meant to defend the decision, but the explanation had come automatically, the way it sometimes did when he mentioned leaving Yale. Noah was looking at him with genuine interest, no argument prepared about the school he'd left. Ethan told him about a form he'd thought he'd finished and a missing piece of information that had turned it into two more calls.

Natalie groaned in recognition and told them about having to send the same document twice because the first copy had gone to the wrong place. Lucia leaned back and said she'd once spent most of a lunch break waiting on hold. Nobody tried to make a competition out of it; Ethan didn't remember whose story had started the conversation by the time Noah asked whether he could have another cracker.

"You can get it yourself," Natalie said, pointing to the packet by his knee.

He looked down, laughed, and took one. "Didn't see it."

Ethan watched him offer the packet to Lucia before setting it between them. Their conversation hadn't become an interview about Los Angeles, or a defense of staying home, or a list of achievements they could compare. He could be annoyed about a form with people who remembered him getting lost in the school office. Noah didn't need the impressive version. Ethan hadn't realized how tired he was of deciding whether to supply it.

Across from them, Marcus was describing an early shift he'd covered over the summer. Ryan recognized the place, interrupted to ask whether somebody they knew still worked there, and then got distracted by Connor dropping a cracker down the inside of his sweatshirt. Emily watched him retrieve it and refused the packet when he held it out afterward.

"That one didn't go in," Connor said.

"No thanks."

Ethan laughed and found himself giving Lucia the version of his own summer that wasn't about the internship: runs before the heat got bad, groceries, a day out that had become a different day out, Christopher growing taller and more opinionated, Jee asking increasingly specific questions. He didn't list everybody's relationship to him. Lucia remembered the names he'd already used, stopping him only when a new one appeared.

"May's Buck's sister?"

"No, Athena's daughter."

"Right. I knew that."

He smiled. "It's a lot of names."

"I'm trying."

"I know."

She asked about Nash. Ethan found a photograph with the baby in Maddie's arms and passed the phone across. Lucia looked without swiping. Sophie leaned toward her, smiling, then Emily moved around the stone so she could see too.

"Oh, he's little." Lucia's voice softened involuntarily.

"He's getting bigger."

"That's what people say about every baby."

"Because they do."

She laughed and handed the phone back. Emily asked whether Jee liked being a big sister, and Ethan had to admit the answer depended on what Nash was doing and whether it took a grown-up's attention away from her. Sophie smiled in recognition; Hannah had once treated Tyler monopolizing Rose's attention as an offense that could be corrected by climbing into the same chair.

"I still do that," Hannah said, hearing her name.

"Yeah, I know."

She tossed a folded napkin at him. It didn't make it over the gap. Marcus caught it before it landed in the food, and Hannah reached to take it back, laughing at herself rather than blaming the distance.

Lucia rested her forearms on her thighs. "Do you miss it?"

"Here?"

"Yeah."

Ethan looked at the worn wood under his hand. Katie had leaned back against Tyler, who was pretending to push her off without actually making her move. Sophie sat with one knee drawn up, the way she'd sat through dozens of afternoons when they were supposed to be getting home. Nothing here looked especially photogenic once the camera wasn't trying.

"Yeah," he said. "I miss you."

Lucia's expression changed slightly, enough that he was glad he'd said the specific thing rather than talking about the neighborhood as if the buildings had been answering his messages. She reached over the space between them and squeezed his hand once. He turned his palm up to meet hers, then let her sit back.

"Call sometimes," she said.

"I do call."

"You send pictures of things."

"They're good pictures."

"They are. You can still call."

He nodded. "Okay."

Not a schedule, not a promise to become perfectly available across three hours of time difference. He could call on an ordinary evening instead of waiting until he had a story worth sending. He could ask about a long shift and stay on the line through the answer.

"I miss things there when I'm here too," he admitted.

Lucia nodded. "I figured."

"It's weird."

"A little." She nudged his shoe again. "You still look pretty happy."

He was. He was tired and stiff, full of pasta, pleased with a sweatshirt that wasn't his, and reluctant to imagine Tuesday even though he wanted to see the people waiting at the other end of the flight. He didn't need to straighten all of that into one answer.

Emily passed a bottle behind Lucia and asked Sophie about something she'd posted earlier in the week. Their conversation became a story about a broken washing machine, a load abandoned wet, and Sophie discovering she didn't own enough hangers for what she'd started. Lucia had lent her some. Emily hadn't known that part and complained, mildly, that nobody had asked her because she'd had spares.

"It was late," Sophie said.

"You could've texted."

"I thought you were asleep."

"I probably was." Emily smiled. "Still."

Ethan listened while the story found its missing pieces. These were the things he'd meant to ask about: who had been awake, who had come over, whose room had smelled like damp clothes for two days. Their lives hadn't stopped where he'd last seen them. He didn't want a summary he could nod through. He wanted Lucia arguing with Sophie about whether the window had been open.

Noah handed Natalie her phone and told her the second version was worse. She disagreed immediately. Marcus asked whether any crackers were left. Katie gave him the open packet and reminded him to keep it level. Ryan tipped his head back toward the sky, following a sound Ethan couldn't quite place until it passed overhead and the small moving light came through the branches.

"Planes are loud tonight," Ryan said.

"You're just sitting still," Marcus answered.

They both watched it go. Ethan tilted his head too, then lowered it when his neck complained. In a few days he'd be somewhere above the weather with Maddie beside him, reading or pretending to sleep. Tonight he was on a log with dirt in the cuff of his trousers. He rubbed it loose and let the conversation continue.

Lucia asked him what he usually ate after an internship day. Such a small question that he answered without deciding how much it meant.

"Whatever we have. Jacob cooks sometimes. I do sometimes."

"What do you cook?"

"Actual food."

"That's not an answer."

He laughed and named two things. She nodded at one, asked about the other, and told him something easy she'd been making when she didn't want to stand any longer. It sounded good enough that he asked her to send it. She opened their messages, typed while he watched, and added the extra ingredient she'd nearly forgotten.

His phone lit against his leg. A recipe, nothing urgent. He thanked her and put it away without answering somebody elsewhere.

Sophie had gone quiet beside Lucia. When Ethan looked over, she was smiling at him, but she didn't say anything yet. He picked up his container to put it with the empties and discovered she'd already made room for it.

"What?" Ethan asked Sophie.

She looked down at the containers, then back at him. "Nothing."

He didn't believe her. He'd known that particular attempt at an innocent face since they were teenagers; she'd never kept it long enough to become good at it. Beside her, Lucia screwed the cap onto her bottle and tried unsuccessfully not to smile.

"Oh, come on. What?"

Sophie glanced at the photograph on Ethan's phone again. "Speaking of your California people, I did some digging. That kid in your pictures, Christopher? I thought he looked like you."

"Ryan said secret sibling," Ethan said. "He's not. Though, I did think he was Buck's kid, when I first saw a picture."

"I wasn't going to say brother." Ryan lifted a hand. "I was going to say cousin."

"He's Jacob's cousin, actually," Sophie said. "I stalked on Instagram."

"Of course you did," Tyler said.

"Somebody has to keep the family tree straight." Sophie grinned. "Speaking of the beefcake of a hunk in those pictures, what's Jacob like?"

Ethan sat back. That wasn't what he'd expected, though he couldn't have said what was. "You've seen him."

"In a picture."

Emily laughed softly. Ethan turned toward her. She was seated on the stone beside Lucia now, holding the empty wrapper from the crackers, and raised her hands when he looked.

"Sorry. That's just not very much."

He knew it wasn't. He picked up the sweatshirt cuff and dragged it over the heel of his hand, giving himself something to do while he tried to answer without sounding as if he'd spent most of the summer collecting the details. Jacob was nice. He also argued with cooking instructions, left terrible handwriting on perfectly sensible lists, and sometimes got so involved in explaining a game that Ethan forgot the question he'd asked. He laughed with his whole face when he stopped checking whether the joke had landed.

"He's funny," Ethan said. "Smart. He gets really into things."

"What things?" Lucia asked.

"Games. Music. Whatever he's trying to figure out."

"Like you," Sophie said.

Ethan smiled despite himself. "Sometimes."

Behind him, Tyler shifted. The log gave a small creak, and Hannah moved her knee clear of Ethan's leg so he could turn toward Sophie properly. Ryan wasn't paying attention yet. He and Marcus were still discussing a video on Marcus's phone, with Connor leaning over the space between them to see.

"He's done with classes now?" Natalie asked.

"Yeah. Finished the summer sessions, and graduated."

"That's good."

"Yeah." Ethan thought of the work that had filled Jacob's evenings, the particular concentration that sometimes made him answer a question a beat late. "He worked really hard."

Sophie watched his face. He knew she was doing it; knowing didn't stop his expression changing when he talked about somebody he wanted to talk about. He rubbed a thumb along the seam of the cuff and tried to leave it alone.

"Are you getting on okay living together?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Still?"

"Still."

"No annoying habits?"

"He's got some."

Tyler laughed. "So have you."

Ethan looked back. "Thank you."

"Just helping."

Hannah nudged Tyler's knee with the heel of her hand. He smiled at her and settled again. Sophie waited instead of joining the interruption. Ethan was increasingly aware that she wasn't really asking about dishes, but he answered the question anyway.

"We both like things pretty clean. That's good. If there's something in the way, one of us usually moves it. We don't have to fight about it."

"Which is a thing," Katie said from his other side. "People can be fuckin' awful to live with."

"Yeah."

She glanced at Connor, who looked up from the video as though he'd felt the accusation arrive. "What?"

"You lived with him. You tell us."

Connor pointed at Ethan. "He kept the place clean. But he'd also sit there with three scholarship letters and act like he wasn't getting paid to go to school."

Ethan laughed. "You're still on that?"

"I was the one paying for textbooks."

"I paid for textbooks."

"With your free money." Connor went back to the video, satisfied he'd made his point. Katie smiled briefly into her bottle, then asked Ethan whether the extra room had worked out the way he'd hoped. He told her it had. It was smaller, obviously; the common space had to hold more than it used to. But Jacob's things were there now. Ethan couldn't picture the room without them unless he deliberately went looking for the old version.

"He's in El Paso with Eddie and Chris this weekend," he added. "Eddie's finally selling his house, so they've got stuff to sort out. That's why I came here with Maddie."

Lucia nodded. "You said. Did he grow up there?"

"Partly. Charleston too."

"So you've both got people somewhere else."

"Yeah."

He liked that she left it at people. He wasn't going to tell the clearing Jacob's history, particularly the parts Jacob hadn't even given him names for. The fact that Ethan wanted to explain what made Jacob matter didn't give him permission to hand over everything he'd learned.

"Show us a picture," Emily said. "I can't remember which one he is."

"The big guy," Tyler told her.

"Tyler, that narrows it down to half the people in his pictures."

Ethan took out his phone before he could decide not to. He had a photograph from the beach, Jacob in the foreground with a drink in his hand, the angle slightly crooked because Ethan hadn't stopped walking properly. There were better pictures of the day. This was the one he could find without opening something that felt more private.

He turned the screen toward Emily. Sophie leaned in, and Lucia shifted so they could all see without taking the phone away from him.

"Oh, okay. I remember." Emily looked at the picture, then Ethan. "He's cute."

The agreement reached his face too quickly.

Sophie saw it.

Ethan lowered the phone. "What?"

"Nothing," she said again, now openly smiling.

"Stop saying nothing."

"Okay." She tilted her head. "Do you like him?"

The conversation beside Marcus's phone didn't stop immediately. Ryan said something about the end of the video; Connor laughed. Ethan was grateful for three whole seconds, then annoyed with himself for noticing the relief. Nobody had asked anything cruel. Sophie had asked a question he'd been answering around for weeks.

"Of course I like him," he said.

Sophie didn't move. Emily pressed her lips together, but the grin at their corners remained. Ethan looked toward Lucia and found her carefully watching him rather than the other two.

"Ethan," Sophie said.

He knew what she meant. He also knew he could pretend not to for another minute if he wanted. Somewhere down the slope, a car went past with its music loud enough to become a brief, unfamiliar rhythm through the trees. He waited for it to disappear.

"We're friends," he said.

"I know."

"And we live together."

"I know that too."

Tyler leaned forward. Ethan could feel his brother looking at the side of his face. It irritated him until Tyler spoke, quietly enough not to turn it into an announcement.

"She didn't ask what the lease says."

Ethan laughed once, unwillingly. "Shut up."

Tyler did. That was the surprising part. He sat back instead of finding another joke, leaving Ethan with the question rather than giving him a reason to fight.

Katie drew one knee onto the log. "You don't have to answer."

"I know."

"Okay."

She turned her bottle between her hands. Hannah had gone still beside him, but not in the anxious way he'd expected. She was waiting too. Ethan looked at the photograph still lit on his phone, at Jacob's face caught in the middle of saying something, and couldn't remember why making a different answer out loud had seemed necessary.

"Yeah," he said. "I like him."

Sophie didn't immediately smile wider. "Like that?"

"Yeah." His ears were warm. He put the phone facedown on his thigh. "I've got feelings for him," he said, a little quieter. "And I have no idea if he feels anything back."

There. The words weren't particularly graceful. They didn't tell anybody when or how much. They were still more accurate than the three descriptions he'd tried first.

Hannah touched his arm, just the backs of her fingers against the sweatshirt. Tyler's hand came to rest briefly between his shoulders. Katie looked down at her bottle, smiling now, and Sophie reached across the space to squeeze his knee.

"Okay," she said.

Ethan laughed because the answer was so ordinary. "Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

Emily grinned. "You look happy when you talk about him."

"Apparently."

"I meant it nicely."

"I know." He smiled back, unable to help it, then hid his face in his hand for a second. "Oh my God."

That was what caught Ryan's attention. He looked across from Marcus, saw Ethan's hand over his eyes, and asked what he'd missed. Ethan lowered it too late to stop Connor looking over as well.

"Nothing," Ethan said, automatically.

Katie laughed. "We're not doing that again."

He gave her a helpless look. She lifted a shoulder and waited; she didn't tell them for him. Sophie stayed quiet too, though he could practically feel her trying not to laugh at how quickly he'd retreated to the word he'd complained about.

"Jacob," Ethan said. "We were talking about Jacob."

"Your roommate?" Ryan asked.

"Yeah." He rubbed his hands over his knees. "I like him. Not just as my roommate."

Ryan's expression cleared. Marcus looked from Ethan to the others and back, catching up without asking for the preceding ten minutes. Connor sat a little straighter, his shoulder brushing Katie's shin.

"Oh," Ryan said. Then, warmly, "Nice."

"It might not be nice."

"Why?"

"I don't know if he feels the same."

Ryan opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. Ethan appreciated the second version more than whatever the first might have been. Marcus set his phone away from the crumbs and asked whether Jacob knew.

"No."

"Not at all?"

"I haven't told him."

"Right." Marcus leaned back, taking the answer without making a plan out of it. Connor asked if Ethan had the photograph still, and Ethan showed him. Connor looked for a moment, said he remembered him now, and gave the phone back without swiping. Katie stole a glance while it passed.

Ethan wasn't sure what he'd expected. A chorus, probably. Tyler declaring he'd known for months. Everybody deciding the whole friendship was obviously romantic and demanding he do something about it before the food went cold. Instead Noah asked, "Do you want to tell him?" and then waited through Ethan's first unsuccessful attempt at an answer.

"I don't know."

Noah nodded. "Fair."

"I mean, I do. But—" Ethan stopped. His fingers found the edge of the phone case. "I like what we've got."

"What do you do?" Lucia asked. "Just on a normal night."

The question gave him something he knew how to answer. "Depends. Eat. Watch something. Sometimes we've both got work, so we're just doing that."

"Together?"

"Sometimes. Not all the time." He looked down at the phone. "If he's busy, I leave him alone."

Lucia nodded. She wasn't grinning now. Ethan could hear Katie tipping the remaining pretzels toward Connor, the soft scrape of the bag against her trousers. He watched a moth circle the light on the stone and tried to put the ordinary evenings into words without making them sound smaller than they were.

"Sometimes I'll be upstairs and hear him come in," he said. "And I'll go down because I want to hear about his day. Or he'll put food aside if he's eating first. Nothing huge."

He thought of the common space with a light on, somebody else's shoes by the door, a question from the kitchen that didn't require him to be useful before he answered. Sometimes Jacob was absorbed in a screen. Sometimes Ethan was the distracted one, looking up too late and asking him to repeat himself. The evenings weren't a collection of perfect moments. There were dishes, things forgotten, two different ideas about what to watch.

He wanted them anyway.

"Sounds nice," Lucia said.

"Yeah." Ethan smiled at her, then looked away again. "It is."

He'd been talking about whether Jacob might want something more as if the thing they already had were a neutral starting place. It wasn't. Ethan looked forward to opening his own door because he might find him on the other side. That was embarrassing to realize in front of people who'd only asked about dinner.

Tyler moved the open shopping bag away from Ethan's foot. He didn't interrupt.

Sophie looked at him directly. "You don't want to mess it up."

"Yeah."

Nobody promised he couldn't. Ethan was glad. The loft was an actual place, not a collection of signs his friends could arrange into a reassuring verdict. Jacob's bedroom door was there. The kitchen was there. On most evenings they ended up within reach of each other without either of them asking what it meant. Ethan wanted that when he got back. He wanted more too, and that was the part he didn't know how to fit beside it.

"Is he interested in men?" Natalie asked gently.

Ethan looked up. "I think so."

"But you're not sure?"

"No. He hasn't said." He took a breath. "We talked about things in El Paso. The first time I went, in May."

He could remember the kitchen, a pause in the way Jacob answered something, the impression that a door had been left unlatched rather than opened for him. None of that was the same as being told. He wasn't going to repeat somebody else's half-finished sentences as if they'd been a declaration.

"There were things that made me wonder," he said. "I didn't ask him to explain."

Natalie nodded. "Okay."

"And even if he is, that doesn't mean—" He stopped, annoyed by the heat returning to his face.

"I know," Sophie said. "It doesn't tell you about you."

"Yeah."

She rubbed his knee once with her thumb before letting go. Ethan sat back against the space Tyler's shoulder made beside him. The log wasn't comfortable enough for the weight of the conversation, but at least his friends weren't trying to make it sound easy.

Hannah had been quiet for long enough that he glanced at her. She looked at his phone, then his face.

"Does he make you laugh?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Like properly?"

He smiled. "Yeah."

She nodded, pleased. "Good."

Tyler reached around Ethan and tapped the hood of her sweatshirt. She ducked and swatted his hand away without losing her smile. Ethan looked toward Sophie again and found her watching that small exchange instead of searching his expression for another confession.

Emily asked how long he'd felt it. It was a reasonable question. It still made him look at his shoes.

"A while."

"A week, or—"

"Longer." He picked a bit of dried mud from the side of one sole. "I don't know when it became this."

He could have named April. Jacob visiting Los Angeles, the two of them alone in the loft, a moment Ethan had stopped himself from entering because he didn't know what waited on the other side. The memory was clear enough to make his stomach tighten even now. He didn't want to take it apart with twelve people around a packet of crackers, and he didn't have to.

Emily nodded before he offered more. "Okay."

"You keep saying okay," he told Sophie, smiling helplessly again.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know."

She laughed. "That's why."

Connor held out the pretzels. Ethan took one simply because it gave him something to do. Salt stuck to his thumb. He brushed it against his trousers, realized they were already dirty, and ate another while Marcus asked whether they still played games together.

"All the time."

"What're you playing?"

Ethan answered. Marcus recognized one and asked about a part he'd got stuck on; Connor leaned into that conversation immediately. For half a minute Ethan was telling them what Jacob had changed in the settings, how it had made the game stop doing the particular thing that had annoyed him for two evenings. The ordinary detail came out warm with familiarity before he remembered everybody had just learned why.

He stopped.

Marcus waited a beat. "Did that work?"

"Yeah."

"Send me what he did when you're back."

"I will."

The request steadied him. He could still talk about Jacob without every sentence becoming evidence. His friends could be interested in a fix, or a song, or the person he shared a kitchen with, instead of treating his feelings as permission to inspect all of it.

Sophie asked if he wanted the phone put away. Ethan looked down at it, surprised.

"No. It's fine."

"I just meant if we're making you uncomfortable."

He shook his head. "You aren't." Then he laughed at himself. "I am."

Lucia smiled. "You're doing okay."

He believed her enough to let his hands relax. The conversation hadn't solved anything. Jacob was still in El Paso, and Ethan hadn't told him what had just been said in a clearing across the country. Here, at least, he hadn't needed to pretend attraction was a mistake or a threat he could reason away. He'd wanted his friends to know, underneath the attempt not to answer. That was embarrassingly obvious now.

Tyler leaned close enough that his next words belonged mostly to Ethan. "I'm happy for you."

"Nothing's happened."

"I heard that part."

Ethan looked at him. Tyler was smiling, but not broadly. He didn't know what Jacob felt either. He was happy that Ethan had something to want, and Ethan couldn't quite defend himself against that without being unkind.

"Thanks," he said.

Tyler squeezed the back of his neck. Ethan complained automatically, knocked the hand away, and then leaned his shoulder into his brother's anyway. Hannah moved her foot so he could stretch his leg without pressing against her shoe.

Katie took the pretzels from Connor and discovered he'd left her the broken pieces. She tilted the bag to inspect them, then poured some into her palm and held it out to Ethan.

"Here. Eat something before you start thinking so hard again."

He took one. "I'm not."

"You went quiet."

"I can go quiet."

"Occasionally."

He laughed and nudged her knee. She nudged back with enough force to make him grab the log. Sophie was laughing too. Ryan asked whether anyone wanted the last cracker, and three people answered at once.

The conversation opened around them again. Natalie wanted to know what Emily had meant earlier about her first class. Connor remembered another part of the video and tried to describe it, badly. Hannah asked Marcus a question about the game he'd shown them, and he moved his phone nearer without assuming she didn't already know how it worked.

Ethan stayed where he was. His ears were cooling. He could still feel the place Sophie's hand had rested on his knee, Tyler's arm behind him, the warm little pressure of Hannah's fingers against his sleeve. Nothing had changed at the other end of the country. Here, somebody could say Jacob's name and he didn't have to rush ahead of what it did to his face.

He turned his phone over, let the screen go dark, and set it beside his bottle. Sophie caught his eye once more. This time he smiled without asking what.

Emily found the cards while looking for another napkin. They were held together by a rubber band rather than a box, the corner of the top card curled enough that Ethan recognized the deck before she turned it over.

"You still have those?" he asked.

"They still work."

"Half of them are bent."

"More than half." She set them on the flat stone and pushed the bag away from the crumbs. "Anybody want to play?"

Hannah looked up immediately. Connor reached for the deck, then stopped when Emily said his hands were dirty. He inspected them, wiped them on his trousers, and received the same look as before.

"Go wash," Katie said.

"In what?"

She handed him a wet wipe from Emily's bag. He took it without continuing the argument and scrubbed at his fingers while Tyler began sorting the cards. Ethan watched him look through the faces and reached over Hannah to pull them away.

"You don't get to choose."

"I was checking they were all here."

"Sure."

Tyler let him have them, smiling. Ethan shuffled badly, with one part of the deck catching beneath the other until Sophie reached across to straighten it. She didn't take over. He tried again, made a more respectable job of it, and looked up to find Katie patiently waiting for him to stop showing off.

Five of them found enough level space around the stone to play: Hannah beside Tyler, Connor on the ground, Katie perched on the end of the log, Ethan leaning forward from his seat. Emily didn't bother joining. She gave them the cards and returned to Sophie and Lucia, who were talking about something in one of the photographs.

"Cheat?" Connor asked.

Hannah nodded. Ethan checked that she knew the rules. She gave him a look familiar enough that he accepted it as an answer and began dealing. Natalie watched his last three cards go to the wrong people and corrected him before he could pretend it had been deliberate.

"Thanks."

"Can't help it," she said, smiling.

Noah drew his feet away from the improvised playing space. Marcus moved the light nearer so they could see the card faces without holding a phone between them. Ryan stayed beside him, interested but unwilling to get off the stone he'd finally found comfortable.

Tyler started with a claim nobody challenged. Hannah went next, set her cards carefully facedown, and looked at Katie instead of her brothers. Katie played without hesitation. Connor took too long. Ethan watched him choose a card, exchange it for another, and then try to cover the pause with a cough.

"Cheat," Ethan said.

Connor turned the cards over. For once he'd told the truth.

Katie laughed so hard she had to brace a hand on the log. Ethan picked up the growing pile, glaring at Connor while trying not to laugh himself. Hannah reorganized her own hand with extraordinary care, apparently hoping nobody would notice how pleased she was.

"I believed you," she told Connor.

He nodded solemnly. "Thank you."

"You shouldn't," Katie said.

Hannah smiled at her without answering. Ethan liked the way she'd begun deciding for herself whose advice to take, even about something this stupid. Ten minutes ago he'd been worrying about what everybody could see on his face. Now he was trying to remember whether Tyler had already put down all the threes.

The game moved unevenly. The stone was too small for everyone's hands, and Connor had to lean around Ethan's knee to reach the middle. Katie kept setting her cards nearer herself. Tyler called her on it once and then did exactly the same thing. Hannah tapped the pile back into the center without asking permission.

"Can anybody even see mine?" she asked.

Ethan moved his leg. "Yeah. Sorry."

His phone lit beside the water bottle. He looked automatically, then made himself finish his turn before picking it up. It was Emily sending the group photograph, not somebody checking on him. He opened it and saw himself standing beneath Tyler's arm, Hannah in front with Katie, Lucia smiling between Sophie and Natalie. Noah had made it into the frame at the last possible moment, one shoulder still slightly raised from moving quickly.

He smiled. Connor asked whether he was playing or texting.

"Playing."

Ethan put the phone down and reached for the card he'd already chosen. Tyler looked at him with open interest, trying to make him doubt it. He didn't. Tyler called him anyway and ended up taking the pile.

"Should've listened," Ethan told him.

"You didn't say anything."

"I looked trustworthy."

Katie laughed, then challenged Hannah and regretted it. Hannah grinned over the turn of the cards. She was getting quieter when she lied, Ethan noticed, which would be useful if he could stop getting distracted by his own terrible hand.

Beyond the playing space, Sophie and Lucia had moved closer to Emily's screen. Natalie sat with them now, resting her chin on one hand. They weren't watching Ethan; they were complaining about how many photographs it took to get one everybody liked. Ryan asked Marcus to send him the video from earlier. Noah offered an opinion about the camera angle and got handed a phone so he could explain it properly.

The clearing had separated into conversations without anyone leaving. Ethan could hear a word here and there, enough to know where to enter if he wanted, not enough to follow every thread. He let the cards occupy him. His feelings for Jacob didn't disappear. They stayed beside the other things he wanted, rather than sitting in the middle demanding everybody look.

Katie won because Connor challenged Tyler at exactly the wrong moment and left her with a clear turn. Hannah accused the two of them of helping her. Connor looked at the cards he'd picked up, held them toward Katie, and asked whether this looked like helping anybody.

Katie laughed and stretched both arms above her head. "Thanks, though."

Ethan gathered the cards before the breeze could lift the corner ones. He passed them to Hannah to square up. She took the task seriously, pressing the edges against her palm, and then held the deck toward Emily.

"Another?" Tyler asked.

"Not yet," Hannah said.

He looked genuinely surprised, then reached for his bottle. Ethan leaned back and stretched the stiffness out of his fingers. Nothing much had happened. They'd played a bad game on an uneven rock with people talking over the rules. He hadn't realized how much he wanted an ordinary half hour afterward, one nobody would describe as important.

Marcus came over for the bottle he'd left near Ethan's foot. "Running tomorrow?"

"Probably not early." Ethan stretched one leg, testing the ache in his calf. "You?"

"Maybe. Depends when I get up."

"Text me if it's later."

Marcus nodded. He didn't turn it into a challenge. Ethan had spent enough of the night trying to outrun him, or people like him, to be grateful for a morning that might involve moving at the same pace.

"Nothing long," he added.

"Wasn't planning long." Marcus looked down at his own shoes. "These need cleaning first."

Ethan leaned forward to see the mud. "Mine too."

They inspected the damage without offering each other a particularly useful solution. Marcus scraped the worst of a clump off against the rough side of the stone, then stopped when it proved too dry to shift. Ethan remembered doing that outside the school changing rooms, both of them trying to make their shoes look as though they'd stayed on the track. He hadn't thought about it in years. He wasn't even sure Marcus remembered the same afternoon.

"You'll be around tomorrow anyway," Marcus said.

"Yeah."

"Good." He took the bottle and moved back toward Ryan. Ethan watched him settle on the other stone, then drew his feet in so Sophie could pass.

Sophie came to sit beside him when Katie moved down to talk to Connor. She fitted into the space without asking anybody to rearrange and accepted the bottle Ethan moved out of her way.

"You okay?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"I didn't mean to put you on the spot."

"You didn't." He thought about it, then gave her a small smile. "Well. You did. But I wanted to answer."

"Okay."

"Don't."

She laughed at the word, recognizing the complaint from earlier. Ethan leaned his head against hers briefly. She held still, then bumped him back when he straightened. They'd done it in corridors, on buses, sitting behind Tyler while he made too much noise. There wasn't a new way he had to behave because she'd asked about Jacob.

"I like talking about him," Ethan admitted.

"I noticed."

He smiled at his hands. "I just don't want everybody telling me what it means."

"Then tell us if we do."

"I will."

She nodded and left it there. He was glad she didn't promise she'd always get it right. She was his friend, not somebody hired to anticipate every awkward place the conversation could go. He wanted her questions. He could also tell her when one was too much.

Lucia called Sophie's name to ask where she'd found a shirt in a photograph. Sophie looked up, answered, and stayed beside Ethan while describing it. Emily wanted to know whether she'd lent it to her before. They argued about the color until Lucia enlarged the picture and ended the discussion by showing them both.

Ethan picked up his phone again. The group photograph was still there, waiting in the chat. He looked at it for a few seconds, then opened Jacob's messages. There wasn't anything he needed to say urgently. He could have put the phone away. Instead he attached the picture, hesitated only long enough to make sure everybody was comfortable with it being the version Emily had already sent around, and typed beneath it.

Ethan: Hannah won Manhunt. We're all very gracious about it, obviously.

He sent it before revising it into something less like himself. The photograph showed a boy trying not to laugh with his brother's arm around him and dirt on his clothes. Jacob had seen him exhausted, frightened, focused, drunk and ridiculous with May. He could see this too.

Hannah leaned close. "Did you send that to Mom?"

"Emily already did."

"Who, then?"

"Jacob."

She looked at the photograph once more and nodded. "Good picture."

"Yeah."

"Except Connor's doing something weird with his hand."

Ethan enlarged the corner. Connor was holding two fingers up at the wrong angle, apparently midway through deciding whether to make a peace sign or touch Katie's shoulder. Hannah laughed and went to show him on her own phone. Ethan let the image return to its normal size.

Tyler reached past Sophie for the cards and received them from Emily. He began showing Ryan something he'd remembered how to do, failing on the first attempt and asking nobody to pay attention until he'd tried again. Ryan paid very close attention. Marcus watched without offering assistance, smiling when the cards separated in Tyler's hands and had to be collected from his lap.

Ethan laughed too. Tyler pointed at him, threatened something he didn't finish, and tried again. This time it worked well enough that Hannah came over to inspect it. She asked which part was supposed to be hidden. Tyler held the deck out of reach and told her to wait until the end.

Noah's phone made a low sound. He checked it, answered quickly, and put it away. Natalie asked whether he needed to get back. He shook his head and stretched his legs.

"Just checking I'm alive."

"Same here," Lucia said, looking at her own screen.

Their parents had once shouted through back gardens or sent one of the siblings out to fetch them. Now the questions came in small rectangles, and nobody had to stand up until somebody actually needed to leave. Ethan checked the time. Later than he'd realized, but not so late that the clearing had changed into somewhere they shouldn't be.

A mosquito landed on his wrist. He brushed it away and scratched the place once before remembering the bites he already had. Sophie saw and offered the sleeve of her sweatshirt as a solution, pulling his cuff down for him when he didn't move quickly enough.

"Helpful," he told her.

"You're welcome."

He left it down. The cold had become a little more definite, making him glad Rose had sent the extra clothes. Hannah had both hands tucked into her sleeves now but was still watching Tyler's cards with the stubborn concentration she'd brought to the game. Marcus asked her whether she wanted the place beside him out of the breeze. She shook her head and then moved there anyway two minutes later, without either of them mentioning it.

Jacob's reply came while Ethan was looking at the entrance, following a rustle he thought might be somebody arriving. It was only leaves. He picked up the phone and read the first bubble.

Jacob: Tell her congratulations. You all look like you ran through a hedge.

Ethan laughed. Sophie glanced down by reflex, then looked away before reading. He tilted the screen toward himself and answered.

Ethan: Several. Pretty sure I've got half of one in my shoes.

Another bubble appeared after a short pause.

Jacob: Looks like a good night. Glad you got everybody together.

It did. Ethan looked from the screen to the clearing and back, feeling the simple pleasure of being able to show him. He didn't need to turn the message into a clue. Jacob had seen the photograph and answered the thing Ethan had sent.

Ethan: It is. How's your night?

He put the phone down while waiting rather than staring at the typing space. Tyler had finally managed the trick. Hannah looked unconvinced by its mystery but pleased by his insistence that she'd chosen the card freely. Emily laughed at whatever Lucia had said. Katie leaned forward to pick up a wrapper beside Connor's heel before it blew into the ferns.

"Don't leave that," she told him.

He took it from her and put it in the shopping bag. Natalie began stacking the empty containers. Nobody had declared the evening over, but small pieces of it were being put away.

Ethan helped gather the lids, testing two before finding the one that fit. Sophie tucked the forks together inside a napkin. Marcus lifted the bottle beside the stone and offered it around one last time. Ryan took a drink, capped it, and asked whether anybody wanted a lift tomorrow if they were going over early for the block party.

"From where?" Noah asked.

"Wherever."

"I'll text you."

"Okay."

No grand arrangement. Just one less thing somebody would have to work out in the morning. Lucia asked Sophie about coming with her. Emily said she'd probably meet them there. Ethan listened while sorting the lids, liking the fact that tomorrow could be assumed instead of invented.

Jacob answered that they'd had dinner and were hanging around. He asked if Ethan was heading back soon. Ethan said probably, and added that he hoped their evening was good too. He didn't attach the entire confession, or ask a question whose answer mattered too much for a casual message. The conversation in the woods belonged to him for now.

He put the phone in his pocket. Tyler watched him do it and then returned his attention to the deck without asking. Ethan appreciated the omission more than he could comfortably say, so he helped his brother find the last card beneath his shoe.

Lucia stood and stretched, both arms reaching until the borrowed sweatshirt lifted at her waist. "Oh, I've been sitting too long."

Ryan groaned as he got up. Connor tried to rise without moving his legs out from under himself and had to start over. Katie offered him her hand. This time he accepted it without making a joke, and she held on until he was steady.

Ethan stood slowly. Sophie stayed beside him while he let his knees decide what they thought. He picked up the containers, light enough to carry in one bag, and checked the patch where he'd been sitting. A cap, a folded napkin, no phone. He retrieved the first two and let Natalie look once around the stone before they began moving.

Hannah held her light low, illuminating the entrance for Lucia. Tyler put a hand briefly on Ethan's shoulder and asked whether he had everything.

"Yeah." Ethan checked the shape of his phone through the pocket. "You?"

Tyler patted his own pockets, frowned, and found the cards in his hand. Emily took them from him before he could claim they were his now.

"Tomorrow," Marcus said, not loudly, to the people nearest him.

They answered in different ways. See you. Text me. Don't be late. Nobody needed a ceremonial goodbye when they were walking down the same path first. Ethan let Sophie move ahead to join Lucia, then followed Hannah through the bend with the shopping bag against his leg. Connor and Katie stayed behind long enough to check the edge of the clearing with their lights; their voices caught up a few moments later.

The path felt narrower with everybody walking instead of running. Ethan kept the bag away from the low branches and stepped around the exposed root he'd avoided earlier. Behind him, Noah was asking Natalie whether she'd actually meant to start reading tomorrow. She said she'd been considering it. He told her not to, and her laugh carried farther through the woods than his answer.

At the wider fork they slowed for the people behind. Ryan and Marcus would go one way with Katie and Connor; the rest would continue toward the houses before separating. Lucia needed her work bag. Emily wanted her old shoes. Sophie walked beside her, still talking about the photograph, while Tyler waited for Hannah to choose the right branch without steering her into it.

Ethan sent Rose one short message that they were coming back. Then he zipped the phone pocket and took the bag in his other hand. The dirt smell thinned as they approached the street. Light fell through the gap between the last trees, showing the pale dust on Hannah's shoes and the dried mud on his own.

She looked up at him. "Good night?"

"Yeah."

"Even when you lost?"

He grinned and bumped her shoulder carefully enough not to knock the light sideways. "Even then."

Tyler reached around both of them, caught Ethan in a brief squeeze, and let go when Hannah complained that he was blocking her view. Ethan pushed his brother forward with the hand that wasn't carrying anything. Tyler laughed and took the next few steps backward until Sophie told him to watch where he was going.

He turned. They kept walking, close enough to hear each other, slow enough that nobody fell behind.

A folding table struck something outside with a hollow metal clang, and Ethan opened one eye.

For a few seconds he couldn't place the room. The light was on the wrong side, brighter than the stripe that usually reached his bed in the loft. Then he saw the familiar edge of the window and remembered. New Haven. Saturday. His phone was facedown beside the bed, where he'd put it after deciding last night that looking at anything else would keep him awake.

He turned it over. Nine forty-three.

Outside, somebody said to hold the other end. Another voice answered that they were holding it. The table scraped, somebody laughed, and the first voice said the other other end with the patience of a person who'd been doing this since breakfast.

Ethan smiled into his pillow. His calves were sore. He stretched one leg, discovered that the other felt much the same, and stayed where he was until the sound of music came through the open edge of the window. Not loud yet. Somebody testing a speaker, turning it up, turning it down again when a neighbor called something he couldn't make out.

He got up before he could talk himself into another half hour. His clean clothes were where he'd left them. The clothes from last night weren't; he'd at least remembered to put them in the laundry instead of creating a small patch of woodland on the bedroom floor. He pulled on a shirt, rubbed a hand through the curls flattened against one side of his head, and went to find breakfast.

Coffee reached him before the kitchen did. So did Hannah's voice.

"I already carried the chairs."

"I know you did," Rose said.

"Then why am I sitting?"

"Because you asked for pancakes."

Ethan came in laughing. Hannah turned on her chair with a fork in one hand and gave him a bright, entirely unearned look of surprise.

"You're up."

"Apparently."

"Tyler isn't."

"Then I'm winning."

Maddie was beside the counter, folding a towel she had evidently used. She looked over at him and smiled before asking whether he'd slept well. The ordinary question caught him pleasantly off guard; she hadn't had to arrange a call or wait for him to come through somebody else's door.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah." She glanced at the window as another table clanged. "Until about twenty minutes ago."

"That's pretty good."

Rose turned from the stove. "Coffee's there. Sit down before she eats yours."

Hannah protested with her mouth full, which didn't improve her argument. Ethan got a mug, poured coffee, and sat where there was already a plate. Maddie pulled out the chair beside him after asking Rose where the clean towel belonged. She set her own mug down and reached for the bowl of fruit between them.

Maddie had been talking to Rose long enough to know where the mugs were. There was no announcement attached to it. She'd found the drawer, put something away, and come to the table. Ethan watched her offer Hannah the strawberries before taking any herself.

"Rose told me you used to refuse pancakes unless she made the little ones," Maddie said.

"I was six."

"Eight," Rose corrected without looking up.

Hannah made a sound into her coffee. Ethan pointed at her. "Don't."

"Wasn't gonna say anything."

"You were thinking it."

"That's allowed."

Maddie smiled at Rose across the table. "I'm getting the impression there are a lot of stories nobody's told me yet."

"You have no idea," Rose said.

"Good night?" she asked him.

"Really good."

"Everyone got back okay?"

"Yeah." He took the syrup Hannah held toward him. "We were just sitting by then."

"After running through half the neighborhood," Rose said.

"Not half."

Hannah looked at him. He smiled into his coffee and revised it to probably half. Rose set a plate of pancakes down between them. The top one still shone faintly with butter; Ethan took two, then a third when she pointed at the remaining space on his plate.

Kit came in with the front door closing behind him. He had a folded piece of paper in one hand and the expression of somebody who'd already answered five questions he hadn't expected before ten o'clock.

"Morning," he said to Ethan.

"Morning, Dad."

"How're the legs?"

"Sore."

"Good. Means you can still carry a table."

Ethan laughed and reached for his fork. Kit poured coffee, glanced at Hannah's plate, and asked whether Tyler had made an appearance. Hannah shook her head immediately.

"I knocked."

"What'd he say?"

"Something."

Kit waited.

"I'm not repeating it."

That made Maddie laugh. Hannah looked pleased with herself but didn't improve the report. Ethan could imagine the greeting perfectly well. Tyler wasn't generally incapable of getting out of bed; he just preferred to negotiate every Saturday morning as if the family might eventually decide not to have it.

Kit went to the doorway and called his name. The answer came muffled from farther inside the house. Rose lifted the pancake plate, considered it, and told Kit to say she was putting the rest away.

A door opened.

"Effective," Maddie said quietly.

"Usually," Rose answered.

Tyler arrived with his hair sticking up and his shirt caught at the back of his collar. He looked at Ethan, looked at Hannah, then reached for the coffee without supplying any defense. Ethan waited until he sat down before handing him the syrup.

"Beautiful morning," Ethan said.

Tyler looked at him over the mug. "Don't."

Hannah laughed. Rose gave Tyler pancakes and told him to eat because his father needed help outside. He made a noise that might have been agreement if nobody insisted on hearing it clearly.

"We just got up," he said.

"You just got up," Hannah told him.

"I heard you the first time."

Maddie moved the fruit bowl out of reach of Tyler's elbow as he leaned forward. He thanked her automatically, then discovered Rose hadn't left the butter near him. Ethan passed it over before he asked. The little exchange felt old and new at the same time, his family making the table work with one more person in it.

Kit unfolded the paper. Ethan saw a rough list rather than a diagram: tables, chairs, coolers, a few names he recognized. Kit put a finger beside one line and said somebody had lent another canopy, but it would need carrying from the house down the street.

"I can help," Maddie said.

"We've got the heavy part," Kit told her. "But Rose could use another pair of hands getting things out."

"Definitely," Rose said, before the offer could become polite instead of useful. "And somebody needs to remind me about the serving spoons this year."

"Last year?" Ethan asked.

"Don't start."

"She took forks," Hannah said.

"I took the right box. Somebody had put the wrong things in it." Rose looked at Kit.

He lifted his mug rather than arguing. Maddie smiled and asked which box they were using now. Rose pointed it out with enough emphasis that Ethan could tell it was the one she'd already checked.

Breakfast took longer than the food did. A neighbor came to the front door to ask Kit about an extension lead. Tyler got up to find it and tried to return to his chair without being assigned the next thing. Kit caught him halfway back, handed him the folded paper, and asked him to check the chairs against it.

"While I'm eating?"

"After."

Tyler accepted the distinction as if he'd won something. Ethan ate the last bite on his plate and took a strawberry. Hannah was still describing the final part of Manhunt to Maddie, answering questions more confidently now that she wasn't out of breath.

"Ryan caught me eventually," she said. "But everybody else was already caught."

"I saw the picture," Maddie told her. "You looked pretty pleased."

"I was."

"She still is," Tyler said.

Hannah kicked his shoe beneath the table. He looked down, then back at her, laughing. Ethan checked that Maddie's mug was out of range before the two of them could make the table shake.

Rose asked whether the dirt she'd found by the door had come from all three of them. Hannah began to answer and then hesitated. Tyler supplied the information she'd apparently been considering leaving out.

"He put her in the crevice."

"I went in on my own," Hannah corrected.

Rose looked at Ethan. "Really?"

"Yeah. First time."

"Wait, there's an actual hiding place inside a rock?" Maddie asked, interested rather than alarmed.

"People were right behind us," Ethan said. "It's just a narrow gap in the rock. You can't reach somebody inside."

"You have to come out again," Kit added, looking at Hannah.

"I know. We did."

"It's disgusting," Tyler said, reaching for the last pancake.

Hannah straightened. "It's not."

Ethan turned toward her so quickly she noticed. She looked between them, annoyed that they'd made the answer surprising.

"What? It isn't."

"You've been telling me it was for years," Ethan said.

"I hadn't been in it then."

Maddie laughed softly. Hannah returned to her breakfast, then looked up because she evidently hadn't finished defending the place.

"There are bugs outside too. There were probably more where we sat afterward."

Tyler opened his mouth. Ethan held up a hand before his brother could spoil the moment.

"No. Let her finish."

Hannah smiled at him now. "It's not somewhere I'd eat breakfast. But it was fine."

Ethan leaned back, delighted. He'd spent years trying to get her within six feet of the entrance, and now she was at the kitchen table explaining why everybody else was being unreasonable. Rose watched him laugh and shook her head.

"As long as you didn't get stuck."

"We didn't," Hannah said.

"And nobody's going back in today," Kit added.

Nobody argued. Ethan wasn't planning to spend the block party hiding inside a rock. He reached for the fruit bowl and offered it to Hannah first; she took the last strawberry before Tyler could change his mind about wanting it.

Maddie's phone buzzed beside her mug. She turned it over, and her face changed before she said anything: the small, immediate smile of somebody recognizing home in a picture. Ethan looked when she tilted the screen toward him.

Jee was holding a spoon in one hand and looking very seriously at the person behind the camera. Nash was visible farther back, safely settled with Chimney close beside him in the second photograph. There was food on the table, a small sock on the floor, the recognizable disorder of a morning Ethan wasn't there to help with.

Chimney: Breakfast done. Hope you two slept. Have a good day.

Maddie read it and laughed softly at something in the photograph. "She picked those herself."

"The pajamas?" Ethan asked.

"Yeah. Apparently she was very sure."

He smiled. Jee's choices had become increasingly definite over the summer. He could imagine the conversation that had produced the mismatched set, but he couldn't hear it and didn't need to supply it. Maddie showed Hannah when she leaned across the table, then passed the phone to Rose so she could see the baby properly.

"He looks awake," Rose said.

"He usually is when somebody wants coffee." Maddie took the phone back and typed a short answer. Then she looked around the table. "Can I send him one?"

Ethan moved his mug out of the way. Tyler swallowed quickly and ran a hand through his hair, making the raised part worse. Hannah laughed at him and pulled the fruit bowl toward the middle so it wouldn't hide Rose. Kit leaned into the frame from beside the counter, still holding the paper he'd intended to take outside.

Maddie took the picture without asking anybody to smile twice. Ethan saw it when she checked: a crowded breakfast table, Tyler caught halfway through protesting his hair, Hannah looking at him instead of the lens. Rose was smiling. Kit's list had become a pale blur beside his arm.

"Good?" Maddie asked.

"Yeah," Ethan said.

She sent it and put the phone away. There was no need to stay watching for the answer. Chimney had his morning; she had hers, and they could let each other see a little of it without trying to be in both places at once.

Rose asked her to help pack the fruit for outside. Maddie got up immediately, finding the container they'd already brought down, and asked whether the smaller pieces should go separately for the children. Rose agreed. Ethan offered to move the used plates before they ran out of counter space. For a few minutes they worked around one another, passing things, reaching, stopping when somebody else was already where they needed to be.

The music outside stopped halfway through a song. Somebody called across the street. Kit checked the time, drank the rest of his coffee, and began putting his mug by the sink. Ethan got up with his plate, feeling the particular stiffness of the morning after he'd treated every slope as a personal challenge.

"Didn't you say you were going for a run?" Tyler asked.

"Maybe. Not early."

"It isn't early."

"It is to me."

Tyler smiled and left it there. Ethan texted Marcus that he was helping set up first and would see him outside. No explanation needed about why a run could wait. He put the phone away and took the plate Maddie passed him, stacking it carefully with his own.

Rose wanted the coolers checked before anything went in them. Hannah knelt to inspect one near the back door, found a small piece of leaf inside, and held it up in accusation. Kit took it from her without guessing who had last used the cooler. Maddie carried the rinsed plates to the drying space while Ethan washed the fruit bowl.

He knew the order of this kitchen. Not every object; Rose had moved some things since he'd lived here full time. But he knew how to stand out of the stove's path, where to put a dish somebody else was reaching for, which cupboard caught slightly unless you lifted the door. He showed Maddie that one when it resisted her hand. She thanked him, lifted, and opened it easily on the second try.

"What goes in there?" she asked.

"Serving things. Mostly."

Rose pointed out the tray she wanted. Maddie brought it down without waiting for Ethan to make the decision for her, then began arranging napkins and the spoons they'd just discussed. Hannah checked the box twice, unnecessarily, and received Rose's thanks anyway.

At the front door, Tyler called Ethan to come help. He dried his hands, took another drink of coffee while it was still warm enough, and went to meet him. A folding table waited just inside the doorway, heavier at the awkward angle than it would be once they had it between them.

"Which end?" Ethan asked.

"That one."

"Got it."

Tyler lifted too soon. Ethan told him to wait, got his fingers beneath the frame properly, and nodded. This time they moved together. The door stayed open behind them while they carried it through, turned around the step, and brought it onto the path.

Morning had changed the street completely. The patch they'd used to choose teams was clear of parked cars. Neighbors were moving chairs, checking wheels on grills, carrying bags from front doors that normally stayed closed at this hour. Someone had already tied bright streamers between two canopies. At the far end, proper barriers marked the temporary closure; beyond them, ordinary traffic continued past.

Kit met them near the pavement and pointed to the first line of tables. Ethan set his end down when Tyler did, then crouched to release the folded legs. The metal was cool against his fingers. Tyler held the frame steady while he checked the latch, and they turned the table upright together.

"Here?" Tyler asked.

"A little farther back," Kit said. "Leave the way through."

They shifted it. Ethan stepped out of the line and looked down the street from the new angle. The usual route toward the corner had become a place people would stand, sit, eat. He'd played in these yards and walked this pavement thousands of times. It still took a moment to see the road without expecting a car to claim the space.

A woman carrying a stack of paper cups stopped beside Kit. "You got them up, then?"

"Eventually," Kit said.

Ethan smiled at her. "Morning, Mrs. Alvarez."

She put the cups on the table before hugging him. He leaned into it, holding his dusty hands away from the back of her shirt until she let him go.

"Look at you." She examined his face with cheerful directness. "Rose said you were home."

"Got in yesterday."

"Good. You're carrying things today?"

"Apparently."

"Then I like you even more." She turned to Tyler and handed him the remaining bag without asking whether he had breakfast plans. "These go down by the food."

Tyler accepted it. Ethan watched him try to remember which table that meant and pointed him the right way before Mrs. Alvarez had to. She asked Kit about the canopy, then moved on to somebody arriving with a wagon full of coolers.

Rose came out with Maddie beside her and Hannah behind them carrying a much smaller box than the one she'd wanted. Ethan started toward them, but Rose shook her head.

"We've got these. Go help your dad."

He obeyed. Maddie caught his eye as she passed, smiling at the speed of the redirection, and he smiled back before Kit called him to the canopy frame. Tyler returned in time to help. They took opposite corners while two neighbors held the others, lifted on Kit's count, and stopped when one joint didn't open properly.

"Don't force it," Kit said.

Ethan lowered his corner and watched him release the catch. A small, stubborn movement, then the frame spread the rest of the way. They lifted again, each leg finding its place. Somebody brought the weights over. Ethan passed one around rather than trying to stretch beneath the whole canopy, then checked the edge of the shade with a hand over his eyes.

There it was: a little room on the street, no walls, already receiving chairs.

Hannah found him with a bottle of water. "Mom said drink."

"I just had coffee."

"She said that doesn't count."

He took the bottle and thanked her. She stayed beside him to watch Maddie and Rose spread the table covering without letting its corners fold under. Maddie had one hand holding the near edge while Mrs. Alvarez reached past her with the cups. They exchanged a few words and laughed; Ethan couldn't hear what about.

He didn't move closer to translate himself into the conversation. Hannah asked which cooler needed carrying next, and he pointed to the one beside the gate.

"Together?" she said.

"Yeah."

They went to get it. Empty for now, much easier than she was preparing for, and awkward enough that their hands still had to find the same rhythm. Ethan took one handle, waited until she had the other, and let her choose when to lift.

By the time the first cooler had ice in it, the street was beginning to smell like food.

Ethan stood beneath the edge of a canopy with a stack of empty trays against his hip, watching somebody coax a grill into cooperation across the road. A thin trail of smoke went sideways, then straightened when the breeze changed. Music had settled into a comfortable volume. Not a performance yet; just something to hear beneath the voices, interrupted whenever somebody needed to call the length of the block.

The barriers were in place. He checked them automatically when a child ran past with a ball tucked beneath one arm, then watched the child turn into a yard instead of heading for the open corner. The street inside the closure belonged to tables, chairs, feet, a wagon full of bags. Beyond it, a car continued on its ordinary way.

"Where do these go?" he asked Rose, lifting the trays slightly.

She pointed past him. "The table with the blue covering. Ask Mrs. Alvarez how she wants them."

Maddie was beside her, opening a package of napkins. "She said leave the middle clear for the hot things."

"Right," Rose said. "Thank you."

Ethan carried the trays where he'd been told. Mrs. Alvarez had a marker behind one ear and was trying to make two containers occupy the same amount of space. She thanked him without stopping, asked him to put the shallow trays at the end, then changed her mind when somebody arrived with another dish.

"Other end. Sorry."

"No problem."

He shifted them. An ordinary task, made longer by six people all trying to be useful in the same narrow patch. Noah came up with a bag of cups and put them where Mrs. Alvarez pointed. Natalie followed with a roll of paper towels. They greeted Ethan while moving past him rather than stopping to create a fresh reunion in the middle of the food table.

"Morning," Noah said. "How're the legs?"

"Fine."

Natalie looked at the way he was standing. "Mine hurt."

"Mine too," he admitted.

She laughed and handed him the paper towels. "Hold that a second."

He did. She found the loose edge, tore it free from the little stuck corner, and took the roll back. Across the street Ryan and Marcus were bringing out chairs, the stack between them blocking most of Ryan's face. Katie appeared behind them with Connor, arguing about whether they'd come through the wrong gate. Ethan didn't catch the conclusion. They both kept walking, so it couldn't have mattered much.

Emily arrived carrying something covered with a towel. Sophie held the other side, carefully enough that Ethan moved before they reached him. Lucia followed with the lids they apparently hadn't managed to fit into the first load.

"Is that all?" Mrs. Alvarez asked them.

"From that house," Emily said.

It wasn't. Sophie looked behind her, remembered another container, and asked Connor to get it before he found a chair. Connor changed direction willingly; Katie went with him, taking the opportunity to argue about the gate again.

Hannah had gone to help Tyler open the last canopy. Ethan saw her hold one corner while Marcus joined the other side. Ryan lowered the chairs and began putting them in a row that somebody immediately asked him to change. He shrugged, picked up the first two, and changed it. Competitiveness apparently didn't extend to chair placement yet.

The Riffraff spread out without anybody assigning them a group position. They had parents to find, things to carry, neighbors who'd already recognized them from farther down. Ethan watched Sophie lean into a hug beside the gate and then turned back to Mrs. Alvarez before she could ask twice for the tray he was holding.

"Sorry."

"You can go in a minute," she said, smiling.

"I'm not trying to."

"I know. Put that there."

He put it there. She stepped back, considered the arrangement, and finally pronounced it good enough. Ethan was free before he knew where he'd planned to go. He rubbed his hands together to clear the dust and looked toward his family's house.

Maddie had left the napkins and was holding a corner of the table covering while Rose adjusted something beneath it. Neither looked around for him. Tyler was coming down the pavement carrying another chair. Hannah followed with two bottles against her chest, talking quickly enough that he had to keep turning his head to hear.

Ethan took the offered bottle when she reached him. "Thanks."

"There's more ice."

"Good."

"Mom wants these kept under the table, not in the sun."

He helped her find the cooler they'd carried earlier. Tyler set his chair down beside the line Ryan had rearranged and called Ethan over to meet somebody. Ethan recognized the man before he got there: Mr. Donovan, whose fence they'd all treated as an obstacle for most of a summer until he'd calmly moved the loose section and told them to use the gate.

"Look who's back," Mr. Donovan said. Ethan had known him first as one of the high school track coaches, and then as the man who took the cross-country runners through drills when everybody else wanted to go home.

Ethan smiled. "Hi."

They shook hands, and then Mr. Donovan pulled him into a brief hug that smelled faintly of cut grass. He'd been working in his own yard before coming over; Ethan could see a small clipping stuck against the side of one shoe.

"Your dad said California's treating you well."

"Yeah. It is."

"School all right?"

"Yeah." Ethan supplied a little more before the answer could become two empty words. "I've got classes starting up again soon. I'm doing an internship too."

"Hospital?"

"UCLA Health."

Mr. Donovan nodded. "Good for you." He looked toward Kit, who was helping somebody with a canopy weight. "He sounded pretty pleased."

Ethan glanced the same way. Kit wasn't watching to see whether the pride had been delivered properly. He was explaining where not to put somebody's fingers. Ethan smiled back at Mr. Donovan and thanked him.

"Still running?"

"Yeah."

"Past people's sprinklers?"

Tyler began laughing before Ethan had quite recovered the memory.

"Oh, don't," Ethan said.

"Why not? You remember."

He did. A hot afternoon, a hose left where it shouldn't have been, Tyler insisting they could make it spray farther if they changed the attachment. Ethan had volunteered to hold it. The attachment came off at exactly the wrong moment, and he turned with it instead of letting go.

Mr. Donovan pointed toward Kit. "Got him right across the back. He was halfway through asking what you two were doing."

Tyler laughed harder. Ethan looked down at his bottle, smiling helplessly now. He'd been fourteen, old enough to know better and young enough to think being quicker might prevent anybody noticing.

"I didn't mean to."

"That part was obvious," Mr. Donovan said. "You looked more surprised than he did."

"Dad was soaked," Tyler added.

"So was I."

"You dropped it on your foot."

Ethan shoved his brother's arm. Tyler stepped sideways, still grinning, and Mr. Donovan laughed with them instead of turning the story into a lesson. Then he asked whether either of them could carry another chair from his porch. They went together while he told somebody else where he'd left the cooler.

"That's your fault," Ethan said quietly as they crossed the little gap.

Tyler looked innocent. "The chair?"

"The hose."

"I wasn't holding it."

"You changed the attachment."

"I improved it."

Ethan laughed and reached for the chair. Tyler took the folded one behind it. They returned before the argument could develop into anything more elaborate, placing both near the shade Mrs. Alvarez had been claiming since morning.

She was already talking to Maddie there. Ethan heard the end of a question about Los Angeles, then Maddie's answer about the flight. Not his childhood, not a list of reasons she belonged. Mrs. Alvarez wanted to know whether the journey had been exhausting. Maddie said it had been long but she'd slept a little, and asked about the dish she'd just brought.

"Don't let her tell you it's easy," Rose said, coming over. "She says that about everything."

Mrs. Alvarez laughed and started explaining anyway. Maddie asked what could be made ahead, listening with the practical interest of somebody who might actually try it. Ethan stood the chair beside them and moved on. They didn't need him to supply the next question.

A familiar voice called his name from the other side of the street.

He turned and found Leah waving with a paper plate in her hand. He'd sat behind her in English for an entire year and borrowed a pen from her often enough that she'd once handed him two before he asked. Her hair was shorter now. He noticed that first, then the same impatient little wave she used to give when he took too long to recognize that she was talking to him.

"Ethan! Hi!"

He crossed the open space carefully, stepping around the end of a wagon. She hugged him with the plate held away from both of them, then backed up to look at him.

"I heard you were here. How are you?"

"Good. You?"

"Good. Busy. I thought I'd missed you."

"Oh, no! I'm here until Tuesday."

She made a face at that and then asked how California was. Ethan gave her the version that fit a street conversation: school, family, liking it, traffic being as annoying as people claimed. She told him she'd seen one of the photographs he'd posted and hadn't realized how many people were in his life out there.

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "A lot."

"You looked happy."

"I was."

She accepted that. He asked about her summer, and she told him about work and a trip that had involved too much rain. He remembered her being organized enough to make a wet holiday sound as if the weather had failed to read the plan. She sounded less organized about it now, laughing at herself and admitting they'd spent one whole afternoon watching television instead of doing anything they'd come for.

"I would've done that," Ethan said.

"You would've gone out in it."

"Maybe."

She smiled. "Probably."

She asked whether he still talked to people from school. Ethan looked across at the friends carrying things past the canopy and laughed.

"Some of them."

"I meant the ones who don't live right here."

"Not enough, probably."

"Same." She turned the plate in her hands. "I keep seeing something and thinking I should send it, and then I forget."

"I do that."

"I know. You sent me that song about a month after you said you would."

Ethan winced. "Sorry."

"No, it was good. I listened to it."

She asked what he'd been listening to lately, and he took out his phone to find the name rather than trying to remember it aloud. Leah moved closer to see the screen. He sent it while she was still there, pleased with himself for once doing the small thing before it could become another intention he'd lost beneath a busy week.

Her phone lit, and she checked it. "There. Much faster."

He laughed. "I'm improving."

She tucked the phone away again. The conversation didn't need to become a promise about staying in touch perfectly. They could send a song, answer when they had time, and talk when a neighborhood afternoon put them in the same place. Ethan asked which days she was around. She answered, then pointed to somebody arriving at the end of the street and told him who'd just come back as well.

Someone called Leah from a table behind them. She held up a finger for a minute and turned back to Ethan, clearly remembering something she'd meant to ask. "Do you still have that recording?"

"What recording?"

"The presentation. You and Noah."

Ethan closed his eyes briefly. "I hope not."

She laughed. "Your laptop wouldn't connect. You started drawing it."

"It worked."

"The marker didn't."

"Noah found another one."

"It was yellow."

He remembered standing beside a screen that refused to show anything, trying to draw a shape large enough to be seen from the back while Noah told the class what they were supposed to imagine. The drawing wasn't the embarrassing part. Ethan had kept explaining it with complete confidence for a full minute before somebody pointed out that nobody could see the lines.

"I thought I was doing really well," he admitted.

"You were. We just couldn't see it." Leah touched his arm, laughing, and then finally answered the person calling her. "I'll find you later."

"Yeah. Come say hi."

She went, and Ethan stood there a moment with the old classroom suddenly clear in his mind. He'd forgotten the teacher's face before he'd forgotten the pale yellow marker. Across the street Noah was helping Natalie move a chair out of the way of the cooler. Ethan called his name and pointed him toward Leah.

"She remembers the presentation."

Noah stared for a beat, then sighed. "Which one?"

"You know which one."

"Oh." He looked at Leah's retreating back. "Great."

Ethan laughed. Noah smiled despite himself and returned to the chair. They'd done better work than that afterward. There wasn't any reason the neighbors and classmates should preserve only the impressive parts.

Ethan went back toward the food table as another group arrived carrying bags. Somebody gave him a quick wave. Somebody else called him Ethan Reed, which made him look around more urgently than his first name alone. Mrs. Keene was seated near the shade with a folded fan in one hand, inspecting the stream of people as though she'd been put in charge of arrivals.

"There you are," she said.

He bent to hug her. "Hi."

"Stand up. Let me see you."

He obeyed, smiling. She looked him over, then pointed at the chair beside her. He sat, setting the water bottle between his feet. Her fan made a small, steady sound against the warm air.

"Your mother said you got in yesterday."

"Yeah."

"Not staying long?"

"Until Tuesday."

"Then you'll be here Sunday."

"Yeah."

"Good." She looked toward the food. "I have to go home and get something later. Don't let them start without me."

He promised to pass it on rather than promising control of the entire gathering. She asked whether Rose was still making a particular dish, then changed the subject to a problem she'd had with her phone. Ethan took it when she offered it and showed her where the volume had been turned down.

"That's all?"

"Yeah. Try it now."

She did, startling both of them with the sound. He lowered it a little and gave it back. She laughed, pressed the right place once more, and told him he used to be much shorter when she asked him to do things.

"I got taller."

"I noticed." Her smile softened. "You used to look at Rose first."

Ethan glanced toward the table before he could stop himself. Rose was laughing at something Maddie had said, one hand holding the edge of a stack of napkins against the breeze.

"When you first came," Mrs. Keene added, not loudly. "If somebody asked you anything. You'd look over to see what she thought."

He remembered doing it without remembering a particular question. Twelve years old, knowing that a house was meant to be permanent and not quite knowing what that allowed him to do inside or beyond it. Rose had answered sometimes. Other times she'd nodded at him and let him find the words himself.

Mrs. Keene folded the fan. "Then you got comfortable and started arguing with all of us."

Ethan laughed. "Not all of you."

"With me, certainly."

"What about?"

"Who'd taken the last biscuit. You had crumbs on your shirt."

"I might've been framed."

She swatted his knee gently with the closed fan. He stayed beside her, laughing, while she asked whether he was eating enough in Los Angeles. He told her he was and answered the next two questions without turning them into proof. She wanted the ordinary details. Somebody feeding him, somebody nearby, whether the place he lived had decent light.

He didn't need to name Jacob in every answer. He told her about the loft, the way the space worked now, and the fact that he cooked. She looked impressed by that until he admitted he was still making some of the things Rose had taught him.

"Good," she said. "No need to make life harder."

Marcus passed carrying a stack of plates and greeted her by name. She called him over long enough to ask about his mother. Ethan moved his bottle so there was space at the edge of the chair. Marcus answered, smiled at him, and went back to the table without putting the plates down.

People were arriving faster now. The sound had filled out from individual voices into overlapping talk, punctuated by a child's laugh or the drag of a chair. Ethan watched a neighbor turn back toward home for something forgotten, leaving a bag with Natalie as casually as if the street were one long kitchen.

Mrs. Keene told him to go enjoy himself. He asked if she wanted water first. She said there was some under her chair, lifted it to prove the point, and waved him off with the fan.

He stood, stretched the leg that had stiffened while he sat, and found Tyler approaching with two paper plates. His brother handed him one without checking whether he'd eaten breakfast.

"Mom said try this before it's gone."

"What's in it?"

"Nothing that'll kill you. I checked."

"Thanks."

Tyler stood beside him while Ethan tasted it, waiting for an opinion he hadn't asked for. It was good enough that Ethan looked toward the table for whoever had made it. Maddie saw him from beside Rose and lifted her eyebrows. He nodded, smiling, and she turned back to finish what she was saying.

Hannah joined them with Emily and Lucia, still talking about where somebody had put the cups. She took a piece from Tyler's plate when he offered it and stayed between her brothers while chewing. Sophie was farther down with Katie, both leaning toward a conversation Ethan couldn't hear. Connor waved him over from beside Noah; Natalie was making room for a cooler beneath their table.

Nothing was happening in one place. The whole neighborhood had come outside, and his friends belonged to different parts of it before they belonged to the same group. Ethan took another bite, gave Hannah the fork when she reached for it, and waited for her to finish.

Then he went to see what Connor wanted, leaving Tyler to tell Mrs. Keene she'd better come get food before somebody ate the good part.

Connor wanted to know whether Ethan was playing.

"What're we playing?" Ethan asked, returning the fork to his empty plate.

Connor pointed past Noah toward the space between two canopies. One cornhole board was lying facedown on a folded blanket. The other was still in the little wagon Katie was trying to pull over a crack in the pavement. Its wheel caught, and she stopped rather than throwing her whole weight against the handle.

"Lift that side," she told Connor.

He went immediately. Ethan put his plate in the bin beside the food table and followed, taking the far end when Katie pointed. The three of them got the wagon onto level ground. Katie pulled it clear of the walking route and began sliding the second board out.

"You can say no," Connor told Ethan, as though he'd only just remembered to make it an invitation.

"Didn't say I wanted to."

"Good. Ryan needs somebody to lose to."

Across the gap, Ryan heard his name without hearing enough of the sentence. He turned, saw the boards, and came over with Marcus. Ethan helped Katie lower the board and crouched to unfold its legs. One stuck against the frame. She reached around his hand to pull the little catch free, and he held the board while she checked it would stay put.

"No jumping on this one," he said.

Katie looked at him, then laughed. "That was one time."

"A memorable time."

Connor was already moving the other board. Noah stepped back with Natalie to give him room, then pointed out that it was facing the wrong way. Connor turned it. Ryan asked about the distance. Natalie said they'd measure it when there weren't people standing in the middle, and continued opening the bag of beanbags instead of treating him as an emergency.

Ethan liked the pause before the game existed. Everybody was still confident. Katie could tell Ryan she was going to beat him without having thrown anything; Connor could claim he didn't care and then spend a minute selecting the red bags with the best seams. Marcus took the blue ones nobody had inspected and weighed one in his palm.

"Later?" he asked Ethan.

"Yeah."

Marcus nodded, and that was as much of a challenge as they needed. Ethan walked back toward the shade while Noah and Natalie began disagreeing about whether the mark they'd used last year was still visible. It wasn't. Natalie found a tape measure in the box beneath the table, and Noah took the other end without being asked.

Sophie caught Ethan by the back of his shirt as he passed her.

"Where're you going?"

"Nowhere."

"Good. Sit down."

She made room on the low wall beside her. Tyler occupied the other side, balancing a plate on one knee and trying to eat something without losing the filling. Ethan sat between them and accepted the napkin Sophie handed him before realizing it was for his hand.

"You've got sauce."

He wiped it off. "Thanks."

Tyler tipped his plate toward him. Ethan checked what was on it, shook his head, and took the bottle Sophie offered instead. For a moment nobody said anything. The shade reached their knees. Beyond it, the pavement was bright enough that Ethan narrowed his eyes when he looked toward the games.

"This is good," Sophie said.

"The food?" Tyler asked.

"This." She gestured with the bottle after Ethan gave it back. "All of us."

Tyler swallowed. "Yeah."

Ethan leaned his elbows on his knees, feeling the warm stone beneath his palms. Sophie and Tyler had sat with him in much worse places, at much less convenient times, without deciding that it counted as doing something special. He'd missed the ability to stop beside them and remain there until the next thing happened.

Sophie nudged his shoulder. "You're quiet."

"I was eating."

"You were holding an empty plate."

"Thinking about eating."

She laughed and rested against him briefly. Tyler finally put his plate down and stretched one leg into the sun. Ethan nudged it back before somebody carrying a cooler had to step over his foot.

"Thank you," Tyler said gravely.

"You're welcome."

Sophie asked whether they remembered a summer afternoon when Tyler had fallen asleep sitting almost exactly there, then refused to admit it even though both of them had watched his head hit the fence. Tyler said he'd been resting his eyes. Ethan remembered the sun stripe moving down his brother's face and Sophie putting a leaf on his knee to see how long it took him to notice.

"You left me," Tyler said.

"We moved six feet," Sophie answered.

"I woke up and you weren't there."

"You could see us."

Ethan laughed. "You were so mad."

"I'd been abandoned."

Sophie leaned across Ethan to push Tyler's shoulder. Tyler caught her hand, squeezed it once, and let her sit back. They'd been dramatic about things that didn't matter, protective about things they hadn't known how to name, and occasionally unbearable to anybody trying to get a straight answer from all three of them. Ethan didn't need to pretend they'd always been easy company.

"Did we ever do what we said we were doing?" he asked.

"Sometimes," Sophie said.

"Homework," Tyler offered.

Sophie looked at him.

"Parts of it."

Ethan shook his head, grinning. Down the street somebody started a song Sophie recognized. She turned toward the speaker, hummed a few notes under her breath, and asked Tyler whether he'd sent it to her first or she'd sent it to him. Neither remembered. Ethan did, but he was enjoying the argument too much to supply the answer yet.

Emily passed with two bottles and stopped long enough to ask whether they'd seen Lucia. Sophie pointed toward the food, then accepted one of the bottles when Emily offered it. The other was for Lucia. Emily went to find her, calling a greeting to somebody's mother as she crossed the open space.

Ethan took the last drink from the bottle beside Sophie's knee and stood to put it in the recycling bag. At the next canopy Hannah was talking to a girl he vaguely recognized and two other teenagers. He slowed to let somebody pass with a bowl, close enough now to hear the girl ask whether Hannah was Tyler's sister.

"Yeah," Hannah said. "And Ethan's."

The girl glanced over. Ethan smiled in acknowledgment and kept his attention on the bag he was looking for. Hannah was bright and friendly, her cup held in both hands, but her next words came too quickly over the start of the boy's answer.

"They're both home this weekend. Ethan's in California now, so we don't—sorry."

"No, it's okay," the boy said. "I was just saying I know Tyler."

"Oh. Yeah."

She smiled. The other girl asked whether Hannah knew someone called Lily, and Hannah nodded immediately, relieved to have the name.

"We had a class together."

"She's coming later."

"That's nice."

The conversation went into a story about a bus journey none of them had enjoyed except in retrospect. Hannah laughed at the same time they did. Ethan could see her trying to catch up with the names, the quick little explanations everybody else seemed to have already. She lifted her cup to drink, found it nearly empty, and lowered it again.

He knew the feeling. Not because anybody was excluding her. The boy shifted so she could hear better; the first girl looked back at her while telling the next part. They simply had a stretch of summer in common that Hannah hadn't been part of.

"Was that the day it rained?" she asked.

"No, the other one. The Friday."

"Oh. Right."

Another pause, just long enough that Ethan wanted to put something in it. Then the girl asked Hannah whether she'd started school again yet. Hannah answered more quietly, making herself repeat the last part when the music covered it.

He found the recycling bag and put the bottle in. Hannah was still smiling at the girl. Ethan left them to it and made room for someone carrying a tray.

"Are you staying for the games?" the girl asked.

"I think so." Hannah glanced toward the boards. "I was going to see what they're doing."

"Yeah, us too."

Hannah smiled, stepped out of the little circle when somebody needed to pass, and didn't quite step back in. She was still nearby when Ethan returned to the wall. He sat beside Sophie again. Hannah could see them if she wanted to come over.

Sophie glanced the same way, then asked Tyler to move his foot again. Ethan returned to the two of them before she had to notice him watching.

"You sent it," he told her.

"The song?"

"Yeah."

Tyler looked at him. "How do you know?"

"Because you played it for a week and said you found it."

Sophie burst out laughing. Tyler tried to object, then recognized too much of himself in the accusation and gave up halfway through. Ethan leaned back against the fence, pleased to have supplied something useful at exactly the wrong moment.

A cheer came from the boards. Ryan had apparently decided waiting until later was unnecessary. Marcus stood at the opposite end with the blue bags, patiently letting him finish explaining the last throw. Katie sat on the empty wagon, one foot braced against its wheel to keep it from moving. Connor was beside her, watching with a concentration he would've denied if asked.

Natalie came away from the game and crouched beside the cooler near their wall. Noah followed with two empty cups he'd collected. He set them in the bin, then asked her where she'd put the bottle he'd left earlier.

"On the table."

"Which table?"

"The one you were standing next to."

He found it without her pointing again. Ethan watched Natalie smile at his back, then look down to find the drink she'd actually come for. She held up two options toward Sophie, who chose one. Natalie took the other for herself and sat at the wall's end.

"You two playing?" she asked Tyler and Ethan.

"Eventually," Ethan said.

"Before Ryan starts writing down the results."

"Too late," Tyler told her.

Natalie laughed. Noah came back and leaned against the fence, listening while Sophie asked him about the presentation Leah remembered. He groaned, but not convincingly enough to stop her asking what had happened to the yellow marker.

"We threw it away," he said.

"You kept using it," Ethan corrected.

"For highlighting. What it was actually good at."

Natalie laughed into her cup. Noah smiled at her and asked whether she'd prefer they kept trying to draw with it. She said no, then admitted she'd once brought the wrong notes into a class and spent ten minutes trying to work out why the lecture made no sense.

"You didn't tell me that," he said.

"I didn't tell anybody."

Ethan laughed. She wasn't embarrassed now, only annoyed she'd done it in the first place. Noah asked whether she'd caught up. Natalie said yes, eventually, and then told him where he'd left his bottle again when he reached for an empty space beside his hip.

Connor came over to ask for chalk. Natalie pointed him toward the box beneath the table, and he found Katie waiting with two children and a very clear idea of where the games weren't going to fit. Ethan got up to see what they were doing.

"Hopscotch," Katie told him. "Apparently."

A boy with a yellow stick of chalk had drawn one enormous square and then run out of room beside the cooler. Connor crouched at the edge of the pavement, looked down its length, and suggested starting farther along. Katie moved the children's chalk box while Ethan carried the chair somebody had left in the way.

"Here?" he asked.

The boy considered it seriously. "There."

Ethan put the chair there instead. Katie drew the first two squares, Connor drew the next ones, and the girl watching them said they were too big. Connor looked at his shoes, then hers, and laughed.

"Okay. Your turn."

He gave her the chalk. She crouched to show him, making a smaller square inside his, and Katie sat back on her heels to watch. Nobody needed an adult explanation. Ethan took a white piece from the box and began adding the numbers where the girl pointed.

"That's crooked," Katie told him.

"It's a seven."

"I know what it is."

He looked at the number, then at the girl. "Good enough?"

She nodded and moved him along. Connor had chalk on the heel of one hand and a fresh blue smear on his knee by the time they finished. Katie stood first, tested one square with a small hop, and made an indignant sound when the boy informed her that wasn't the start.

Ethan laughed. Connor tried it properly, landed outside a square, and accepted the immediate criticism with both hands raised. Katie went next, much too competitive about something she'd only just helped draw. Ethan stayed long enough to watch her finish without a mistake, then took his turn because she was looking directly at him.

He nearly made it. His heel came down on a line. Both children noticed. Katie laughed, delighted, and Ethan stepped out before anybody could demand an explanation.

"Fine. You win."

She bumped his arm with hers as he passed. Connor was already helping the boy find a smaller stone to throw, and Katie turned back to them without waiting for Ethan to approve the next thing. He returned to the wall with chalk on his fingertips and a line of white dust across one shoe.

The noise moved around them in layers. A small child demanded the song be changed; somebody older said let it finish. A woman carrying a bowl asked Tyler to hold the table covering while she found a clear space. He stood at once, leaving his plate beside Ethan, and Sophie shifted to keep it from tipping.

Hannah came toward them with her cup. Her face brightened when Emily called her over from beside Lucia. Ethan saw her shoulders drop before she'd even reached them.

"What'd I miss?" Hannah asked.

"Ryan being annoying," Emily said.

"So nothing."

Lucia laughed, and Hannah grinned openly now, taking the bottle Emily offered so she could pour something colder into her cup. She began telling them something, hands moving as soon as the cup was put down. Emily bent to hear over the music, then answered with enough enthusiasm that Hannah laughed and shook her head.

Ethan looked away before he could turn the difference into a comparison she hadn't asked for. She'd stayed with the other teenagers until the conversation gave her a way out. Nobody had been unkind. Now she was somewhere she didn't have to think about when her voice belonged in the gap.

"Do you want to get in on this?" Tyler asked, returning.

Ethan looked at him. "What?"

"The game. Come on."

He took Ethan's wrist and pulled once. Ethan got up mostly because he wanted to, told Sophie to come too, and had to brace when she put both hands on his forearm to let him haul her upright. Tyler laughed at the sudden weight and stepped clear.

"Strong," Sophie told Ethan, smiling.

"Shut up."

She laughed and followed them. They went past the food table, where Maddie was talking to Mrs. Keene while Rose cut something into smaller pieces. Mrs. Keene had her fan open again. Maddie leaned closer to hear her, answered, and then looked up when Ethan stopped to put Tyler's empty plate in the bin.

"Having fun?" she asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah." She smiled toward the game. "Apparently we're expected to play later."

"Who's we?"

"Me and Rose."

Ethan looked at his mother. Rose didn't look up from what she was doing, but she was smiling. He knew that expression. Tyler saw it too and made a pleased noise beside him.

"Oh, you're in trouble," Tyler told Ryan when they reached the boards.

Ryan turned. "Why?"

"Nothing. Keep going."

Ethan laughed and accepted the bag Marcus handed him. It was heavier than he'd expected, the cloth warm from somebody's palm. He turned it once, feeling the loose filling settle, then stood behind the line Natalie had marked.

"Not yet," Ryan said.

"I know."

"I'm just saying."

Ethan waited until Ryan turned away, then made a gentle practice toss into the open space between his own hands. Katie watched him from the wagon and shook her head as though she'd already decided something about his chances.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing."

Sophie laughed behind him. Ethan pointed the bag at both of them, then lowered it before the gesture could become a throw he couldn't take back. He wasn't going to spend the afternoon arguing about somebody else's win. His turn would come.

Connor got off the wagon to make room for Hannah. She came over with Emily, saw the offered place, and asked whether it moved before sitting down. Katie planted both feet against the wheels.

"Not now."

Hannah sat, satisfied. Emily stood beside her, drinking from the bottle Lucia had given back. Marcus let Ryan count the bags he'd just retrieved from the board, then asked Ethan whether he wanted blue or red for the next round.

"Blue."

"You can have red," Ryan said.

"I was asking him," Marcus answered, smiling.

Katie laughed. Ethan grinned back at Marcus and held the blue bag where Ryan could see it. Sophie leaned her shoulder against Tyler's while they waited, and Natalie came over to check nobody had moved her line.

Ethan stepped behind it without being asked. He looked down the little lane between the boards, past Marcus's shoes to the pale wood at the other end. People were still talking across the game. Someone would need him to move for a plate or a child or a chair before the afternoon was done. For now, the space was clear.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the last stiffness of the morning, and waited for Ryan to take his turn.

Ryan's bag landed on the board and stayed there. Ethan watched it slide two inches, stop short of the hole, and settle against another red bag. Ryan nodded to himself as though the board had finally understood what he wanted.

"One," Katie said.

"I know."

"You looked like you needed help."

Marcus took the bag left in his hand and sent it in a low arc toward them. It hit the near board with a soft, flat sound. The red bag already there moved, turned, and dropped through the hole. Marcus's blue one stayed on the wood.

Tyler bent to look beneath the board. Ryan stared at Marcus.

"Thanks," Tyler said.

Marcus laughed. "You're welcome."

Ethan lowered his head, smiling, and waited while they worked out the score. The pleasant part of watching somebody else compete was that the unfortunate bounce couldn't happen to him. Then Marcus retrieved the bags, sent the blue ones back down the lane, and Ethan discovered that his own turn arrived much faster than he'd expected.

He stood beside Tyler, both behind the mark, and took his first throw with more confidence than practice. The bag hit the front edge, folded over it, and fell onto the pavement.

Sophie made a small sympathetic sound. Ethan looked back.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You made a noise."

Tyler laughed, threw his red bag, and missed the board entirely. Ethan turned toward him with immediate interest. Tyler held up his remaining bags before he could speak.

"First one."

"Of course."

They improved. Not quickly enough to justify the early confidence, but enough that the next bags stayed on the board and the little group around them began paying attention to something other than their expressions. Ethan changed the way he held the cloth, letting the filling spread across his palm. On the next throw, it landed flat and slid toward the hole.

Not in. Close enough to make him step forward before remembering he wasn't allowed to follow it there.

Marcus grinned from the far end. "That."

"Yeah."

Tyler put his next bag in front of it. Ethan looked at him.

"What?" Tyler said.

Ethan shook his head and took another blue bag. The aim became a practical little problem: clear the red one, stay on the wood, don't give it so much height that it bounced away. His legs were no longer sore enough to be interesting. He leaned into the movement and watched the bag settle beside the hole, close enough that the next one might carry it through.

Behind him, Hannah asked Connor what happened if two bags touched. Katie answered before Connor could finish explaining something that wasn't the rule. He let her correct him, then asked where she'd got her information.

"Playing it," she said.

"Recently?"

"More recently than you."

Hannah laughed. Ethan threw, saw blue disappear through the hole, and shouted before he could make the reaction more respectable. Marcus lifted both hands at the other end. Tyler looked briefly wounded by the volume beside his ear.

"Sorry," Ethan said, not sounding it.

The game narrowed the afternoon to short stretches of concentration. Throw, watch, retrieve. Somebody shifted a chair out of the edge of the lane. Noah fetched a bottle and returned to the same place without being asked to preserve it. Natalie watched the line, then abandoned that job when it became obvious nobody needed supervising.

Their team lost. Ryan's last round was irritatingly good, and Marcus's answer wasn't enough to bring it back. Ethan accepted the result right up until Tyler put an arm around his shoulders and attempted to kiss his cheek.

"No." He ducked, laughing, and found Tyler following. "Get off!"

Sophie caught the bottle Ethan nearly knocked over. Tyler managed the kiss at his temple instead, exaggerated and loud, then let him go before Ethan could do anything about it.

"Good game."

"Terrible game," Ethan said, wiping his face with his shoulder.

Marcus came over smiling, put a hand against the back of Ethan's head for a second, and took the blue bags when he held them out. They could lose without anything being wrong. Ethan was still going to demand another turn later.

Mrs. Alvarez came past with Maddie and Rose and asked who was next. Ryan said they could play, in the encouraging voice of somebody expecting to be generous about the outcome. Rose took the blue bags from Marcus, weighed one, and asked which end Maddie wanted.

"This one?" Maddie said.

"Fine."

She stayed near Ryan. Rose went down the lane beside Marcus, who'd agreed to remain for the next game when Tyler went to find a drink. Ethan stayed to watch. Sophie settled beside him with her shoulder against his, both of them facing the board as Maddie made her first throw.

It bounced off the back.

"Oh," she said.

Ryan started explaining the slope. Maddie listened, then asked whether it always leaned that way or whether he was just trying to make her feel better. "Both," he admitted. She laughed, asked about the scoring, and tried again when it was her turn. The next one stayed on the board. Ethan saw the small, pleased lift of her eyebrows and smiled at her when she looked back.

Rose's throws weren't spectacular. They were steady. One on the board, another close to the hole, a third that moved just enough after landing to disappear. Ryan stopped talking through the retrievals.

Tyler returned halfway through and looked at the score, then at Ethan.

"Told you."

"She didn't tell me anything," Ethan said.

"She wouldn't."

Maddie missed another. She laughed at herself, adjusted her grip, and stopped looking toward Ethan for an opinion after the next throw. She was watching Rose instead. At the far end his mother called out where to aim, and Maddie answered with a nod he could see from the side.

The game lasted long enough for Mrs. Keene to move her chair into a better viewing position. She asked the score twice. Noah answered both times. Katie and Connor abandoned the wagon and stood behind Rose, giving her contradictory advice until she smiled and told them to let her throw.

They went quiet. The bag landed, slid, and stayed on the wood.

"There," Rose said.

Ethan clapped before he realized he'd started. Hannah joined him, delighted. Ryan checked the board, then Marcus, who laughed and spread his hands. The final count belonged to Maddie and Rose.

Maddie turned toward her partner with her mouth open in a surprised smile. Rose lifted a hand. They met in the middle and touched palms, then immediately looked down to avoid stepping on the bags somebody had left in the lane.

"That was fun," Maddie said.

Ryan smiled, recovering. "Again?"

"After I eat."

She handed him the bag she still held and went with Rose toward the food. Ethan let them pass without making the win a commentary on anything except the game. Tyler couldn't resist telling Ryan he should've listened. Ryan gave him a look, laughed, and began looking for new opponents.

The afternoon spread. Ethan played another round with Sophie against Katie and Connor, lost track of the score until Natalie supplied it, and spent far too long trying to repeat a throw that had worked once by accident. Eventually the smell from the grills became more persuasive than the board. He handed the bags to Emily and left her to choose a partner.

He ate in the shade with Lucia, listening to her explain a conversation he'd missed. Somebody had mixed up two similar containers. Mrs. Alvarez had solved the problem by asking who'd actually cooked what, which apparently hadn't been anybody's first idea. Lucia laughed around a bite and offered him the napkins.

"Good game?" she asked.

"Depends which one."

"The one you were shouting through."

"Oh. Yeah."

She grinned. "I heard you."

Maddie came past carrying two small bowls and stopped when Lucia offered her the spare chair. She sat, put one bowl within Ethan's reach, and told him to try it before deciding which of the two he wanted.

"Whose are they?" he asked.

"I'm not telling you."

Lucia laughed. Ethan looked between them, suspicious now. One had more dressing, the other a scattering of herbs he couldn't identify without tasting. He took a forkful, considered it, and tried the other.

"They're both good."

"That's what I said," Maddie told Lucia.

"Pick one," Lucia said.

He tasted them again because he could, not because the decision required a second round. The cooler one had a little more bite to it. He moved it closer.

"This."

Maddie grinned. "Me too."

Mrs. Alvarez, passing behind her, stopped long enough to tell them that theirs had been sitting in the shade longer. Rose heard her name in the explanation and came over, smiling before she'd reached the chair. Ethan had apparently chosen Mrs. Alvarez's potato salad. Rose said she'd survive the disappointment if anybody would help her find the lid of the other bowl.

Lucia found it beneath the napkins. Maddie took the spare bowl back to the food table rather than leaving Rose to carry everything, and Ethan watched them continue the discussion as they went. No winner had been declared loudly enough to count. Everybody was still eating both.

Lucia reached for a little of the one Ethan had chosen. "I like the other one better."

"Good. More for me."

She nudged the bowl toward him, laughing, and started telling him about the dish she'd almost brought before work made it impractical. He asked what it was. She described the ingredients with her fork in the air, stopped to remember one, and then told him she'd make it some other time.

He reached for another piece of bread and didn't apologize for the volume. The afternoon was loud enough to hold it. Down the street a cluster of children had gathered around two buckets, and somebody was carrying a tray of water balloons out of a yard. Ethan watched Katie notice them, then Connor notice Katie noticing them.

"Oh, no," Lucia said quietly.

"They're going to play."

"I meant you."

He looked at her. She was smiling at the way he'd already stopped eating. He finished the bite, wiped his hands, and put his plate down properly before going over.

It was a toss, not a fight. At least that was what the neighbor setting out the buckets told them. Partners, one balloon, a step farther apart after every catch. No throwing into the food, no aiming at people watching. The children went first, receiving more chances than the announced rules suggested. Adults applauded catches made with a balloon clutched against a wet shirt.

Ethan stood beside Hannah to watch. She pointed out Emily trying to keep her shoes out of the water beneath the bucket. Emily saw them looking and beckoned Hannah over.

"Come on. Me and you."

Hannah went willingly. Ethan found himself recruited by Tyler before he could ask anybody else. Sophie took his phone when he held it toward her and tucked it into the bag she was keeping well behind the playing space.

"Don't forget where it is," she told him.

"I won't."

He absolutely would've if she hadn't said it. Tyler handed him a balloon, cool and slippery, its knot pinched between two fingers. Ethan held it properly and looked down the short distance to his brother.

"Ready?"

Tyler nodded. The first toss was easy. So was the return. They stepped apart. Beside them, Marcus and Noah passed a blue balloon back and forth while Natalie watched with her arms folded and a smile she wasn't trying to hide.

Hannah caught Emily's throw too hard. The balloon sagged into her palms and survived. She looked astonished, then laughed and sent it back with much more care.

Ethan's next catch landed against his chest. He felt cold through the cotton and held still until he was sure the balloon hadn't split. Tyler laughed at him. Ethan stepped back farther than he needed to and threw.

Tyler caught it.

"Nice try."

"I was trying to help."

"Sure."

Their patch of road filled with small splashes, shouted names, children being reminded not to run through the players. Mrs. Alvarez held a cloth and dried her hands before taking a balloon of her own. Across from her, Mr. Donovan was smiling with the confidence of someone who'd already accepted getting wet.

Ethan watched Hannah take another step back. Emily lifted both hands, ready. The balloon rose, turned, and broke against the side of one palm. Hannah gasped at the splash, then bent forward laughing. Emily stood with her wet hands spread, looking at the blue remnant dangling from her finger.

"Sorry!" Hannah called.

Emily shook her head and pointed at the water down her own shirt. Hannah laughed harder. Ethan lost the next three seconds to watching them and nearly missed Tyler's throw entirely.

The balloon struck his fingertips, dropped, and burst against his shoe.

He looked down.

Tyler laughed so loudly that somebody turned from the food table. Ethan took a single step toward the bucket. Tyler saw the intention before he reached it and held up both hands.

"No. We're out."

"Just rinsing my hands."

Sophie, from a safe distance, laughed in outright disbelief. Ethan grinned at her, took a fresh balloon only when the next round was offered, and waited until Tyler agreed to stand opposite him again. Being childish was more enjoyable when everybody knew what he was doing.

They made it farther the second time. Noah and Marcus didn't; a beautifully judged throw ended in two hands that met a fraction too firmly. Natalie gave Noah the towel without saying anything, which made him laugh as soon as he took it.

Mrs. Alvarez and Coach Donovan stayed in. So did a little girl and her father, though the father kept moving forward after every catch and nobody with the power to stop him seemed interested. Ethan threw gently over a widening distance, watching Tyler's hands instead of his grin.

This time Tyler's catch failed. Water struck his shirt and ran down the front. For a moment he stood perfectly still, looking at the bright scrap of rubber caught between his fingers.

Ethan folded with laughter.

"Come here," Tyler said.

"No."

He wasn't fast enough. Tyler crossed the gap, caught him around the shoulders, and hugged him hard enough to share most of the wet patch. Ethan shouted, pushed at his arms, and ended up laughing into his brother's collar while Hannah cheered as if a much more impressive sporting event had occurred.

Tyler let go before either lost their footing. Ethan stepped back and pulled the damp shirt away from his chest. Cool air reached the wet cotton; he complained again just because Tyler was enjoying it.

Maddie watched from beside Rose, both laughing. Ethan pointed toward his brother in explanation. Maddie shook her head as though she hadn't needed one.

The older neighbors won their round. Coach Donovan held the final balloon up for the children to see before lowering it carefully into the bucket. Mrs. Alvarez bowed with one wet hand held away from her clothes, and even Ryan clapped without finding anything to argue about.

When the tosses ended, everybody bent to collect the scraps before they were trodden into the pavement. Ethan found three by his shoes and another caught against a chair leg. He gave them to Hannah, who held the bag open with Emily, then went to retrieve his phone from Sophie.

"You remembered," she said.

"You told me to."

She handed it over. He checked the pocket would keep it clear of the wettest part of his shirt and put it away. There was no message he needed to look for in the middle of this.

Music became louder as the food queues thinned. Not suddenly, not enough to make conversation impossible, but enough that people started marking the beat with a foot or a hand against a chair. Ethan found himself standing beside Lucia again, comparing the damage to their clothes. She'd stayed out of the balloons and was entirely too pleased about it.

"Next time," he told her.

"Maybe."

Emily took Lucia's hand before he could continue and pulled her toward the little open patch beside the speaker. Lucia protested until she recognized the song, then went laughing. Sophie joined them. Hannah followed after looking at Ethan once, and he nodded toward the space as though she'd needed his agreement.

She hadn't. She was already moving.

Tyler came up beside him and bumped his shoulder. Ethan looked at the wet front of his shirt, at the people dancing, and then back at his brother.

"No touching."

Tyler smiled. "You're already wet."

"That's your fault."

He went anyway when Tyler put a hand between his shoulders. Not because he could dance especially well. Sophie was laughing at her own attempt to make Emily follow the same step; Lucia had abandoned the step entirely. Ethan took Hannah's hand when she offered it and let her pull him through a turn she hadn't properly planned.

They recovered, laughing. Hannah tried the turn again with Emily, who followed her more easily and then made an extravagant little bow when they finished. Lucia clapped. Sophie took Ethan's hand and pulled him into the space they'd left, both of them trying to remember a step they hadn't practised since somebody's school event.

"Like this," she said.

"I'm doing that."

"No, your other foot."

He looked down, corrected it, and promptly lost the beat. Sophie laughed so hard she had to let go. Tyler came into the gap, demonstrated something entirely different, and received no useful encouragement from either of them.

Beyond their shoulders, Kit had joined Rose. He said something near her ear and offered a hand; she put her serving cloth on the table before taking it. Their movement was smaller than the younger group's, easy enough to keep a conversation going. Ethan caught Rose smiling at something his father had said, then looking down when he turned her beneath his arm.

Maddie stood beside Mrs. Keene, both watching. When Ethan met her eye she shook her head at his footwork, smiling, and he responded with an exaggerated attempt to improve it. She laughed and turned toward the woman who'd come over to speak to her.

His phone stayed in his pocket. Someone else would have pictures. Ethan wanted both hands free for the next turn, and Sophie was already reaching for one of them. He stayed with them, badly on the beat and pleased enough not to care, while the afternoon carried on around the boards and tables and chairs.

The first sign that the party was ending was somebody washing a tray while the music was still playing.

Ethan noticed because he'd been looking for somewhere to put his cup. The food table had acquired gaps. Lids were going onto containers, serving spoons being gathered into a bowl, clean pieces of foil smoothed over dishes people had spent half the afternoon telling one another to try. The light had changed without asking him to pay attention. Sun reached under the canopy now, warm against the backs of his calves.

He found the bin, put the cup in, and turned to see Hannah carrying a stack of empty bowls toward Rose. She held them high enough to keep the top one from slipping against her shirt, her whole attention on the wobble.

"Want a hand?" he asked.

"I've got it."

"Okay."

He stayed clear. She reached the table, set them down, and looked up at him with a small, satisfied smile. He returned it and took the bag Rose offered when she saw his empty hands.

"Can you get the things by the boards?"

"Yeah."

"Not the boards yet. People are still playing."

He looked across. Ryan had found another opponent. Of course he had. Marcus stood with him, watching Mrs. Alvarez select a bag with the unhurried concentration she'd brought to everything since morning. Ethan couldn't see the score. Judging by Ryan's expression, it wasn't going entirely his way.

Tyler came over carrying two bottles and asked Ethan which one was his. Ethan chose the one with less water because it was more likely, then took the last drink and gave it back. His shirt had dried, mostly. The collar felt stiff where the water had soaked through, and he could smell sunshine and somebody's grill whenever the breeze lifted it away from his chest.

"Trash?" Tyler asked, looking at the bag.

"By the game."

"Come on."

They went together. There were napkins beneath one chair, an empty packet behind another, a small collection of caps that nobody seemed to have noticed while eating. Ethan held the bag open while Tyler gathered the obvious things. Then they changed jobs, each finding something the other had missed.

"That's yours," Tyler said, pointing at a blue scrap beside Ethan's shoe.

"Could be anybody's."

"It exploded on you."

"Several things exploded on me."

Tyler smiled and picked it up. Ethan found another balloon remnant caught at the curb. He crouched to free it from a little clump of grass while a child came over to hand Tyler three more, apparently pleased to have a task with an immediate result.

"Thanks," Tyler said.

The child went away and returned with a whole handful. Hannah saw and began checking the other side of the playing patch with Emily. Nobody turned it into a competition. Ethan was grateful. His calves had stopped complaining until he'd asked them to squat six times in a row, and he didn't need an audience for how slowly he was now standing.

At the board, Mrs. Alvarez put her last bag neatly onto the wood. Ryan looked at it, then at Marcus, then began laughing. Ethan had missed the final count but not the result.

"Again tomorrow," Ryan said.

"Maybe," Mrs. Alvarez told him.

She gave the bags back and went to collect her dish. Marcus bent to pick up the ones beneath the board, shaking his head with a smile. Ryan protested something Ethan couldn't hear over the last chorus from the speaker. When the song ended, nobody immediately started another.

The quiet wasn't complete. It simply had more spaces in it. Ethan could hear wheels on the pavement, a cooler lid closing, somebody asking whose serving spoon had the blue handle. The smell from the grills had become warmer and less sharp as people finished the cooking instead of beginning it.

He and Tyler tied the bag when it was full enough. Kit pointed them toward the collection point, then asked whether they could bring the folding chairs back on the return trip. Tyler sighed for the sound of it and took one handle of the bag.

"You were going that way," Kit said.

"I know."

Ethan laughed. They carried the bag together, deposited it with the others, and came back for the chairs. Not all of them belonged to the same house. Kit identified three that did; Tyler stacked two while Ethan folded the third and checked its hinge wouldn't close on his fingers.

"Other way," Kit said.

Ethan changed the angle. The chair folded properly. He didn't have to know everything because he'd moved away. His dad had been folding that particular chair since before Ethan had learned which cupboard it lived in.

They carried the first load to the house and set it where Kit indicated, just inside. Ethan stayed near the door while Tyler moved the stack clear of the walking space. Then they went back out. The road looked wider every time a chair disappeared from it.

Maddie was helping Rose sort the dishes near the gate. She'd taken her shoes off for a minute and was standing on the path, one foot rubbing the back of the other. Ethan slowed when he saw her, ready to ask if she needed anything, then watched Rose hand her a chair and receive an emphatic nod.

Maddie sat. Rose went back to the table. Nothing more complicated than sore feet and somebody who understood them.

"Good day?" Ethan asked as he passed.

"Very good." Maddie smiled at him. "You?"

"Yeah."

"You're sunburned."

He touched the back of his neck. "A little."

"A little," she repeated, looking unconvinced.

He'd used sunscreen. He'd also got wet, rubbed his face with his shirt, and stayed outside much longer than he'd expected. He accepted the look, promised he'd check it properly when they got in, and didn't ask her to pretend she'd imagined it.

She reached for her water. "Go. Your brother's waiting."

Tyler was indeed standing at the next stack, trying to make a folding table move by looking personally offended at it. Ethan went to help. They turned it on its side, released the legs one at a time, and closed it between them.

"Ready?" Tyler asked.

"Yeah."

They lifted together. The frame put a solid weight through Ethan's fingers, more awkward than heavy. He backed up carefully, letting Tyler choose the route until they were clear of the chairs. At the path they turned, one step and then another, keeping the tabletop away from the gatepost.

Something knocked softly against the corner. Tyler stopped immediately.

"Wait."

Ethan held still while his brother checked the clearance. Kit moved a bag out of the way. They went through without needing to make the opening larger by force, then lowered the table where the others were being stacked.

"Thanks," Kit said.

Tyler rolled his shoulders. Ethan flexed his hands and looked back down the path. There was still plenty to do. He wasn't exhausted enough to wish somebody else would take over, but the thought of sitting down later had begun to acquire detail.

He went back to the street with his brother. The younger children were being collected in uneven stages: one family ready, another still searching for a bottle, a child in tears because leaving had happened before the next game. Katie knelt to pick up the chalk box. Connor helped the boy from earlier choose two sticks to keep, waiting through a decision that mattered much more to him than the adults watching.

Sophie caught Ethan's sleeve as he reached for another chair.

"Five minutes," she said.

"What?"

"Sit down for five minutes. You're making me tired."

He looked at the chair, at the patch of shade she'd chosen, and surrendered without much resistance. She sat beside him, both of them facing the last people still moving around the board. His shoulders settled back. He hadn't realized how long he'd been holding them up.

"Better?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Good."

She leaned her head briefly against his shoulder. Ethan let his cheek rest against her hair, then straightened when she did. Her clothes smelled faintly of food and warm outside air. He'd spent most of the day a few feet from her or looking for where she'd gone; there wasn't anything urgent left to catch up on.

"That was fun," she said.

"You keep sounding surprised."

"I'm not surprised. I just like it."

He nodded, watching Ryan fold the legs of one board while Marcus held it steady. "Me too."

Sophie moved a loose thread at the edge of her sleeve between two fingers. "I thought we'd spend today trying to get everybody in one place."

"We did."

"For about ten minutes. Then everybody kept going somewhere."

"That's normal."

"I know." She smiled. "It was nice."

Ethan understood. Nobody had arranged a complete, perfect afternoon for him to visit. The food needed moving. A neighbor wanted a conversation. Katie wanted to play, then help the children, then disappear after Connor to get something from a house. His friends could belong to the day without having to stand beside him through all of it.

She took her phone out to check the time, then put it away again without opening anything. Ethan could see the reluctance in the second movement.

"What?" he asked.

"I've got things to do."

"Now?"

"No. Tomorrow. The next day." She rubbed her forehead. "I keep putting them in a different order and hoping there'll be less."

"Packing?"

"That too. Washing. Finding the charger I know I brought home."

He smiled. "Want help?"

"With finding a charger?"

"With whatever."

Sophie leaned back, looking toward the table where their mothers were still sorting things. "Maybe. I don't know. I want to be here tomorrow, not doing laundry."

"You can do both."

"Yeah." She smiled faintly. "That's what I keep telling myself."

He wanted to offer more help, but she was already looking toward the gate, working out the timing for herself. They sat a little longer while somebody called a child's name twice and finally found him behind the canopy, still intent on getting the last of his drink out of a cup.

"I could come over early," Sophie said at last. "Go back for a little while if I need to."

"Yeah."

"Can you save me food if I miss it?"

"Absolutely not."

She turned to him. Ethan lasted about a second before smiling, and she pushed his shoulder with hers.

"I'll put some aside," he said.

"Thank you."

"I might eat it."

"Then put aside more."

He laughed. She took out her phone again, typed something quickly, and put it away with more purpose this time. He watched her put the phone away. Tomorrow he'd find a container before he sat down to eat; otherwise he'd forget, and Sophie would arrive hungry while he tried to explain.

"Did you get to talk to Leah?" Sophie asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"A little. She's around tomorrow too."

"Good."

Sophie looked at him. "You used to think we could all do everything together."

"I was very reasonable."

"You got annoyed when Tyler had plans."

"So did you."

She laughed. "Yeah."

He nudged her knee with his. Neither apologized for being fifteen. They'd wanted more time than the day had, then been irritated with the people who couldn't make it bigger. Ethan could recognize the feeling without wanting to have the same argument now.

Lucia came over carrying the folded table covering, held out a hand for Sophie's empty cup, and put it in the bag beside the gate. She stood a moment looking at the remaining chairs before sitting on the low wall near them.

"My feet hurt."

"Mine too," Sophie said.

Ethan lifted a hand. Lucia laughed and stretched one ankle, the other shoe planted on the ground. He asked whether she'd found the thing she'd left in Rose's kitchen. She nodded.

"Your mom put it aside. Before somebody washed it and sent it home with somebody else."

"Good."

"I'm coming early tomorrow. She asked."

"Then I'm sleeping until you get there."

Lucia smiled. "I'll knock loudly."

Sophie began laughing. Ethan said he'd tell Rose not to let her in. Neither of them looked particularly concerned by the threat. Beyond their chairs, Emily and Natalie were dividing the remaining bottles between two coolers, Noah reading the labels on the lids so they went to the right houses.

Hannah came over with her phone held flat in one hand and asked Ethan to look at something before she sent it. He bent toward the screen. Emily had caught the moment Tyler hugged him after the water balloon burst: his face turned halfway away, Tyler laughing, both of them so wet the darker patches joined at the shoulder.

"Oh, that's awful," Ethan said.

Hannah laughed. "I like it."

"Of course you do."

"You look happy."

He looked again. He did. Mouth open, eyes nearly shut, one hand planted against Tyler's chest without much hope of pushing him off. Not a photograph he'd have chosen to pose for. He smiled at it anyway.

"Send it."

Hannah tapped the screen, waited for his phone to make a sound in his pocket, and went back to Emily. Ethan didn't take it out. He could look at it when he sat down inside; right now Tyler was asking where he'd put the bag, and he still remembered.

It was getting darker at ground level. The sky above the roofline still held light, but the shadows beneath the tables had deepened. Kit and Mr. Donovan went to check the far end of the block before anything was opened to traffic again. People were still moving through the closed space; nobody hurried them merely because a clock had passed a particular number.

Ethan got up when Rose called him. Sophie caught his hand long enough to squeeze it, then let go. Lucia stood with him, taking the table covering toward the house while he went to find out which cooler needed moving.

This one wasn't empty. Hannah took the other handle before Tyler could reach it, braced her feet, and looked at Ethan.

"Ready?"

He nodded. They lifted. The water inside shifted the weight toward him, and he slowed until it settled. Hannah changed her grip without putting the cooler down. Together they brought it along the short path, set it near the door, and let go with nearly identical breaths.

"Okay?" Ethan asked.

"Yeah." She flexed her hand. "That was heavier."

"Yeah."

She looked back at the street. Emily waved, and Hannah waved back, then took the lighter bag Rose had left by the door. She carried it in without waiting for anybody to decide whether she'd done enough for the day.

Tyler handed Ethan the last two folded chairs. "Light ones."

"Thanks."

"I did the heavy one."

"I saw."

Tyler grinned and went to help Kit. Ethan took the chairs inside, found the space beside the others, and returned for the small pile of things nobody knew what to do with: a towel, a lone napkin holder, somebody's bottle with a name written too faintly to read.

Natalie solved the bottle by turning it toward the light. Noah recognized the towel. The napkin holder belonged to Mrs. Alvarez, who'd been looking for it behind the wrong table. Ethan took it over, received a quick hug and a promise of more food tomorrow, and came back without another assignment.

That felt like the end more than the music stopping had. His hands were empty. The road was almost clear. At the far end, a car slowed beyond the barrier while Kit spoke to the person moving it; the driver waited until the last cooler had been taken out of the lane.

Before he reached the gate, Maddie called his name. She was holding a folded table covering she'd been handed and looking between two houses with nearly identical chairs outside.

"Which one's Mrs. Keene's?"

He pointed. "That one."

"Thank you. I thought so." She laughed at herself. "I'm good until everybody changes places."

"I get that in LA."

"Still?"

"With some people. Especially if I meet them somewhere different."

Maddie nodded and started toward the house. Ethan walked with her, taking the bottle he recognized from the little pile beside the door. Mrs. Keene was just inside, moving slowly enough to avoid the bags waiting in the hall. She took the table covering, thanked Maddie, and asked whether anybody had found her bottle.

Ethan held it up. She laughed and took that too.

"See you tomorrow," Maddie said.

Mrs. Keene answered with a promise to bring the thing she'd been talking about all afternoon, then told Ethan not to let Rose work too hard. He said he'd try. On the way back Maddie asked whether everybody knew whose things were whose or whether they were guessing as much as she was.

"Mostly we know," he said. "Some of it looks the same every year."

She looked toward the bare patch where the table had stood. "I liked today."

"Yeah. Me too."

"I'm glad we came."

He glanced at her. She wasn't watching for the right response, only looking down to step around the last folded chair on the path. Ethan moved it out of the way, then fell into step beside her again. At their own gate she stopped to collect Rose's tray, and he went to stand with his brother and sister.

Ethan stood beside the gate with Tyler and Hannah. Sophie came to say good night, then Emily. Noah and Natalie left together, still talking about whose house held which container. Ryan and Marcus called from farther down. Connor had found something else in the wagon and was making Katie look at it before they went home.

Nobody hugged him as if Tuesday were happening now. Lucia squeezed him once and said she'd see him tomorrow, then went with Sophie. The visit still had another whole day of people arriving, and another after that. Ethan was allowed to be tired without spending the tiredness on goodbye.

Maddie came up beside him with Rose's tray in her hands. "Coming in?"

"Yeah."

He took the far end when she shifted it toward him, not because it was too heavy for her but because the loose cutlery kept sliding. Together they brought it through the gate while Tyler held it open and Hannah followed with the bottle he'd nearly left behind.

Behind them, the street began returning to itself: chairs gone, canopies folded, a little chalk still bright beside the curb. Ethan looked once, then turned back toward the open door. He wanted a shower, water, something soft to sit on. His family was already discussing which of those would happen first.

He went inside with them.

On Sunday the chairs stayed inside the gate.

Ethan carried two of them through the kitchen while Rose told him where she wanted the drinks. He heard about half the instructions, stopped before the chair leg could catch the doorway, and asked her to start again. She pointed with the spoon in her hand, waited until he nodded, and returned to the bowl.

"Outside. In the shade. Not where your dad's putting the grill things."

"Got it."

The kitchen window was already open. Somewhere outside, Tyler was calling for a cloth; inside, Hannah was trying to decide whether the napkins matched the covering closely enough to matter. Ethan shifted the chair higher against his hip and waited for the doorway to clear. The house smelled of cut bread and coffee, with something sharper from the bowl Rose was dressing. He'd come down expecting to be handed a job and had still somehow left the first one too late to finish his drink.

Maddie opened the door for him. Ethan brought the chairs through, set them with the others, and stood back to look at the yard. Smaller than yesterday's whole block, bigger than it seemed when nobody was moving furniture around it. There was enough space for the tables and the loose circle of chairs beyond them, provided Tyler didn't put the cooler in the gap everybody needed to walk through.

Tyler put the cooler in the gap everybody needed to walk through.

Ethan pointed. His brother followed the finger, sighed at himself, and moved it before Rose came out to tell him. Hannah arrived behind him with a bundle of napkins tucked beneath her arm and a bowl held carefully in front of her.

"Table?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"The one without anything on it."

She gave him a look and put the bowl down. There were two. Ethan laughed, told her the near one was fine, and accepted the napkins when she thrust them at him.

Yesterday had used the whole neighborhood. Today Rose had decided they were feeding people properly, as if the amount of food they'd eaten outside hadn't counted. Not everybody from the block. Family friends, a few neighbors, the Riffraff drifting in when they could. Still enough people that the kitchen had been busy since Ethan came to find coffee late that morning.

He'd slept longer than he'd intended. His skin wasn't as sore as Maddie's look last night had predicted, but the back of his neck remained warm, and he was grateful for a clean shirt with a higher collar. His legs had settled into a dull, manageable ache. There would be no running competition today unless somebody else proposed it and carried him there first.

Kit stood near the grill, inspecting something he'd just cleaned. He looked over when Ethan came closer with the napkins.

"Those for me?"

"Don't think so."

"Then why're you bringing them here?"

Ethan stopped, looked at his own hands, and turned back toward the table. Kit laughed behind him. Hannah saw the whole thing and made no effort to keep it to herself when Tyler asked what was funny.

Maddie came out with the drinks, set them in the shade, and asked where the ice was. Tyler pointed toward the cooler he'd moved. She checked inside it, nodded, and put two bottles beneath the ice before looking back at the kitchen.

"Do you need me in there?" she asked Rose through the open door.

"Yes, please."

"Coming."

She went without Ethan following to find her a task. He could hear them talking while he arranged the napkins, an argument about whether the larger bowl was too large that ended with Rose saying it would fit and Maddie asking where the lid was. He smiled at the table and stopped fussing with the napkins before Hannah could catch him doing it.

"Who's coming first?" she asked.

"Lucia said early."

"She's already here."

"Then probably Lucia."

Hannah laughed and pointed toward the house. Ethan turned in time to see Lucia appear in the doorway carrying a stack of plates. She'd tied her hair back again and looked much more awake than she had outside the gate on Friday.

"Hi."

"Hi." He went to take some of the plates.

"I've got them."

"Okay." He moved aside instead. "Mom got you already?"

"Before I got my shoes off."

"You didn't have to take your shoes off."

"I found that out." She set the plates down and gave him a quick hug once her hands were free. "How's the neck?"

"Fine."

She looked at the collar and smiled, then turned to greet Kit. Hannah followed her to ask about a photograph Emily had sent that morning. Ethan heard the answer begin with a laugh before the two of them moved out of the doorway and gave somebody inside more room.

A corner of the table covering lifted as the breeze came through. Ethan caught it before it could fold beneath the plates. Hannah came over to help, held the opposite edge, and waited while he moved the bowl a little farther from the center.

"Not there," she said.

"Why?"

"People won't be able to reach."

He looked along the row of chairs. She was right. He put it back within reach and used a small stack of plates to hold the corner instead. Hannah smoothed her side, stepped back, and examined the result as if she were checking somebody else's work.

"Better."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

She stayed beside him for a moment, looking toward the gate. Ethan could tell she was listening for somebody before she said anything.

"Do you think Emily's coming?"

"Yeah. She said she was."

"And Sophie?"

"After she gets things done."

Hannah nodded. Then she asked whether Ethan would be home most of Monday, and he felt the question settle differently from the others.

"Yeah," he said. "No big plans."

"Okay."

He waited rather than offering her Tuesday before she'd asked for it. Hannah pulled a loose piece of thread from the edge of the covering, failed to break it, and left it alone. She wasn't upset; he didn't need to make her upset by anticipating the goodbye.

"Maybe we can do something," she said.

"Yeah. What?"

"I don't know yet."

"Tell me when you do."

She smiled, satisfied with that much. Kit called her name, and she went to find out what he wanted, moving around the chairs without the little pause she'd made when she'd first heard how many people were coming. Ethan watched her go and then looked down to discover he'd been holding the empty napkin wrapper the whole time. He put it in the bag before it escaped into the yard.

He went back to the kitchen. Rose was cutting vegetables. Maddie had taken over arranging the bread and was trying to work out whether one plate was supposed to remain separate. Ethan answered before she had to ask Rose again.

"That one's mine."

"Okay. I thought so."

"Dad keeps it separate on the grill."

Kit had done it for years, since Ethan had started asking for the vegetables to stay separate instead of getting buried under everything else. It was a preference, not a rule about meat. He didn't need to explain it to a kitchen that already knew. Maddie moved the plate to the side Rose indicated, washed her hands, and asked him to reach the container above her.

He did. She thanked him, then told him she didn't want it opened yet.

"I know."

"You were pulling at the lid."

"I was checking."

Rose laughed without looking up. Maddie gave him a look he recognized, set the container out of easy reach, and went back to the bread. Ethan took a piece from the end she wasn't using and accepted the small sound of protest because she was smiling when she made it.

There was a knock at the front door, followed by a voice that already knew somebody would answer. Hannah got there before Ethan. When he reached the hall, Rose's cousin Ellen was setting a bag down beside her feet and asking where she'd been told to put the cold things.

"Kitchen," Hannah said. "I'll show you."

Ellen looked past her and saw Ethan. "There he is."

He leaned in for a hug and had to turn sideways around the bag. She squeezed him, leaned back to see his face, and told him he looked exactly the same before immediately asking whether he'd got taller.

"No," he said, laughing.

"Then I'm getting shorter."

She let him take the bag. It was heavier than it looked, a collection of containers pressed together beneath a folded cloth. He carried it into the kitchen while Ellen followed Hannah, greeting Maddie by name when Rose introduced them.

"Lovely to meet you," Ellen said.

"You too." Maddie moved the bread plate out of the way so the bag could land. "Can I take something?"

"The one on top. Carefully. I couldn't find a lid that fitted."

Maddie lifted it with both hands. Ethan watched the cloth shift, revealing a dish he'd eaten here before, and made an interested sound. Ellen heard it, laughed, and told him not to start before everybody else.

"I wasn't."

"You were thinking about it."

He grinned. She turned toward Rose and began telling her why she'd been late, though no one had said she was. A missing bowl, a phone call, somebody stopping her on the pavement. Not a disaster, just the accumulation of small things that made arriving take longer than leaving should have.

Ethan carried the spare serving bowl outside. The near table had begun to look inhabited: napkins, plates, a bottle with its cap already missing because somebody was drinking from it. Tyler was shifting chairs again. Kit had pointed him toward a clearer arrangement, and Hannah was offering advice he didn't particularly want.

"You could help," Tyler said.

"I am helping."

"By moving one?"

She picked up the nearest chair, moved it six inches, and looked at him. Tyler laughed and pointed her toward the other end of the table. Ethan put down the bowl and took a chair himself before the argument could become a performance everybody was expected to watch.

They finished together. The gap stayed clear. Kit tested the space with the plate in his hands, nodded, and went back to what he was doing. Hannah claimed a seat for later by putting her sweatshirt over its back.

"You're not sitting yet," Rose called from the doorway.

"I know!"

Ethan laughed. Hannah turned toward him and lowered her voice. "I wasn't."

"I know."

He went to get the drinks Rose wanted. Through the window he could see Maddie and Ellen talking while they worked, Ellen holding a cloth over one shoulder and Maddie gesturing with a closed packet. They weren't discussing him. From the few words that carried, they were comparing ways to transport food without it becoming somebody's lapful on the way.

Lucia brought the drinks out with him, and they found the cooler had become crowded much faster than expected. She crouched beside it, moved a bottle to the deeper end, and asked Ethan to hold the lid so she could see what was underneath.

"There's room," she said. "If I stop putting the tall ones on their sides."

He laughed and handed her the next bottle. They worked slowly enough that neither needed to fish the same thing out twice. From the house came Ellen's laugh, followed by Rose answering something neither of them could hear.

"Your cousin?" Lucia asked.

"Mom's cousin."

"I thought so. I remember her from something."

"Probably here."

"Probably." She closed the lid and brushed the water from her hand against her trousers. "It's nice not having to work today."

"Yeah."

"Yesterday too. I kept thinking I had to check the time."

He nodded. She wasn't making the weekend into a gift she expected him to repay. She'd wanted to be here, arranged it, and was finally sitting inside the time instead of counting how much remained. Ethan offered her the chair nearest the shade. She said in a minute and went to ask Rose what else needed carrying.

The gate opened. Mr. Donovan came through with a covered bowl and an apology for not staying long. He needed to go somewhere later. Kit waved him in anyway, took the bowl, and told him he'd have time to eat first if he stopped explaining why he couldn't.

"That's what I was hoping," Mr. Donovan said.

Hannah laughed and found him a chair. Mrs. Keene followed a few minutes later, the promised dish finally arriving in both hands instead of remaining something she'd describe. Ethan opened the gate wider and took it only when she asked him to.

"Mind the bottom," she said.

He shifted his palm beneath it. Warm, solid, more weight than he expected. She watched until he had it safely and then went to find Rose, leaving Ethan responsible for exactly the thing she'd told him not to spill.

He got it to the table intact. Natalie arrived just as he set it down, Noah behind her with a bottle in each hand. Neither tried to hug him over the dish. Natalie greeted him with her shoulder against his arm and moved aside so Noah could put the bottles down.

"Where do you want these?" Noah asked.

"Cooler."

"Which—" He saw it. "Got it."

Ethan grinned. Natalie took one bottle from Noah before he could try to move the lid with both hands full, and the two of them crouched beside it, negotiating space among the ice and drinks already there.

The people arriving today didn't have to be found across a street. They came through the same gate, put something down, stood long enough to be greeted properly. Ethan felt it in the way conversations lasted. Nobody had to move on because a wagon was coming through or somebody behind them needed the trays.

Marcus came with his mother. Ethan greeted her, accepted the hug, and answered her question about whether he'd tried yesterday's food before she could ask Marcus why he hadn't checked. He had tried it. He remembered enough to tell her which part he'd liked, and she smiled with the satisfaction of somebody who wanted an actual answer rather than politeness.

Ryan arrived a little behind them and went straight to Kit. They shook hands, then Ryan looked at the grill and asked what needed doing. Kit gave him the closed container of clean utensils and told him where to put it. Ryan obeyed before finding Ethan.

"Another game later?" he asked.

"Something sitting down."

Ryan looked delighted. "Cards?"

"Maybe."

"Good."

He went to ask Marcus, who hadn't yet finished putting his mother's bag somewhere safe. Ethan watched Ryan stop himself from interrupting, wait half a beat, and ask anyway the moment Marcus turned around. Some habits had survived the move into adulthood with remarkably little change.

Emily and Katie came together. Connor appeared behind them with a bag he claimed he'd been told to bring, though none of the three agreed who'd asked him. Emily stopped the argument by taking it to Rose. Katie greeted Hannah with a quick squeeze and asked where she'd put the cards.

"You have them?" Hannah asked Emily.

Emily held up her bag on the way to the kitchen. "Yes."

"Don't let Tyler get them."

Tyler, standing right there, looked personally injured. Hannah smiled and ducked behind Katie before he could reach the back of her hood. Ethan laughed and caught his brother's wrist, letting Katie and Hannah escape toward the chairs.

"Stop bothering the guests."

"She's not a guest."

"Fine. Stop bothering her."

Tyler let him go with a shove against his shoulder. Ethan shoved back, then moved away before it became something Rose had to interrupt with a full name. He could hear her introducing Maddie to Marcus's mother inside. Maddie's laugh came through the open door, followed by a question he couldn't catch.

Sophie arrived last of the people he'd been watching for. She looked slightly breathless, carrying a bag over one shoulder, and stopped just inside the gate to take in how much had happened without her.

"You're early," Ethan told her.

"Am I?"

"To me."

She smiled and came straight to him. He hugged her, felt the strap catch between them, and stepped back so she could take the bag off properly. Her eyes went toward the table.

"Anything left?"

"We haven't started."

"Oh, thank God."

Ethan laughed and took the bag when she handed it to him. She'd brought something Rose had asked for, found the charger she'd been missing, and got one load of washing started. She supplied all three pieces of information in the space between the gate and the table, as if they were equally relevant to being here.

"Look at you," he said.

"Don't. I'm very pleased."

He grinned and put the bag down. Sophie greeted Hannah, then Rose, and found Maddie at the table with enough ease that Ethan didn't need to make the introduction again. He went back to Kit before his dad could call twice for the plate he'd been asked to bring.

"Hungry?" Kit asked.

"Yeah."

"Good. Take these."

Ethan took the finished vegetables to the table. The warmth came through the plate into his palms. Behind him the grill made a brief, low sound as Kit put down the next batch; ahead, Rose moved a bowl so there would be room for what he was carrying.

Maddie reached across to steady the plate when he set it down. Their hands nearly met. She moved hers first, laughing, and told him the edge was clear. He thanked her and looked around the table at the chairs filling, the bags beneath them, Hannah leaning across Katie to ask Emily for something.

Not everybody was sitting. Ellen had gone back for a spoon. Mr. Donovan was still talking to Marcus's mother. Tyler stood beside Kit, pretending to help while trying to find out which things were ready first. It was a house full of people in the particular sense Ethan remembered: everybody able to locate someone who wanted something from them, nobody waiting to be formally included.

Rose called for the plates. Ethan passed the first stack along, and the gathering finally began to sit.

Tyler discovered there wasn't room for his knees after he'd already sat down.

"Move over," he told Ethan.

"Where?"

"Just a bit."

Ethan shifted his chair, moved the plate out of reach of his brother's elbow, and immediately found Hannah's foot where his own had been. She looked up from the bread basket and moved it without being asked. The three of them adjusted again, their chairs making small, uneven sounds against the ground, until everybody had enough space to pretend it had been comfortable from the beginning.

Maddie sat opposite, smiling into her water. Ethan caught her eye and shrugged. There were versions of a family meal she knew already. This particular arrangement of knees and complaints was new.

Rose asked who needed the potatoes. Four hands moved, none belonging to the same part of the table. Ethan took the bowl from Sophie, served himself, and passed it toward Noah. Natalie reached for the spoon Noah had missed. Lucia moved a glass out of the bowl's path. By the time it reached the other end, Kit had finally sat down with his own plate.

"Eat while it's hot," Rose said.

Everybody obeyed for perhaps half a minute.

Then Mr. Donovan asked Kit about something he'd been fixing, and Ryan asked Marcus a question halfway through his first bite, and Mrs. Keene wanted to know whether Ellen had actually brought the thing she'd promised. The conversation spread across the table, finding the people it belonged to. Ethan put food in his mouth and let it happen around him.

It was different from yesterday. No music close enough to answer for a pause, no strangers passing behind his chair, no reason to keep one eye on where the next game was starting. Just the shade moving slowly and a plate he could put down without wondering whether somebody needed the space.

Maddie asked him to pass the vegetables. He did, then offered the separate plate Kit had set aside when she asked what he'd chosen from it.

"Try it."

She took a small piece. "That's good."

"Dad does them like that."

Kit looked up, hearing himself mentioned. Ethan lifted the plate slightly. Kit nodded, told Maddie what he'd put on it, and asked whether she wanted more. She said yes, if there was any, and received the plate without Ethan needing to stay in the middle of the exchange.

Ellen watched him reach for the bread and laughed.

"You still eat like somebody might take it away."

Ethan looked up quickly enough that she saw the joke hadn't quite landed where she'd meant it. She softened at once.

"I meant fast. You always wanted to be back outside."

He nodded, smiling a little. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good," Rose said. "Then chew."

That made him laugh. He put the bread down for a moment and took a drink. Maddie didn't look at him with a question he had to answer. She offered the water jug when he reached for it, then went back to asking Ellen how long the dish she'd brought took to make.

Ethan was grateful for the change without wanting anybody to announce it. Sometimes a careless phrase was only a careless phrase. Ellen had corrected herself, and his mother had told him to chew; he could remain at the table instead of becoming a subject everybody had to handle gently.

Tyler nudged him under the edge of the table. Ethan nudged back, accepting the wordless check, and stole the piece of bread his brother had set too close to his own plate.

"Hey."

"You weren't eating it."

"I was about to."

Hannah passed Tyler the basket before they could make more of it. He took another piece and gave her a quick, grateful bump with his shoulder. She accepted it without looking away from what Emily was saying farther down.

"Which age was the worst?" Ellen asked Rose a little later, with a glance toward Tyler and Ethan that made both stop pretending not to listen.

"Whose?" Rose asked.

"Either. Both."

Tyler pointed at Ethan. Ethan pointed back. Hannah smiled with the satisfaction of the only person not yet included.

"Fifteen," Rose said after considering. "For entirely different reasons."

"I wasn't difficult at fifteen," Ethan objected.

Kit looked at him.

"Not that difficult."

"You could argue about anything," Rose said. "Anything. I'd tell you to take a jacket, and somehow we were discussing whether I knew what the weather was."

"It wasn't cold."

"Sometimes it was."

"He does that now," Maddie said.

Ethan turned toward her, betrayed. She was laughing, but not performing the discovery for the other adults. She had her own evidence.

"I ask if he's eaten," she said, "and he gives me a whole explanation of what happened to his afternoon."

"I do eat."

"I know. Eventually."

Sophie laughed into her glass. Tyler leaned back, apparently delighted to have been temporarily released from the discussion. Ethan pointed his fork at him.

"She's not finished with you."

"I can wait."

Rose smiled. "Tyler's was getting him to admit he'd forgotten something instead of explaining why it wasn't necessary."

"Sometimes it wasn't."

Kit laughed aloud. Ethan leaned forward, grinning, and Hannah nearly spilled her water trying to get out of the way when Tyler reached for him.

"Sit," she told both of them.

They sat. Maddie moved the jug back toward the center, where it wouldn't be the first casualty, and asked Hannah whether they always did this. Hannah didn't have to think about the answer.

"Yes."

"Not always," Tyler said.

She looked at him. Ethan laughed and went back to eating before he could become responsible for the next sentence.

Marcus's mother offered her own account of teenage certainty from the far end. Marcus put his head down, smiling into his plate, while Ryan listened with much too much interest. The story involved being certain he knew the way somewhere and discovering, with everybody already in the car, that he didn't. Ryan tried to help him with a detail and only made it worse.

"Thank you," Marcus told him.

"I was there."

"I know."

Ethan laughed. Noah asked whether they'd made it in time, and Marcus said yes, just not by the route he'd intended. That let the conversation become other people's stories too. A missed turn. The wrong entrance. Ellen arriving at a house a week early because she'd put the date in her calendar without the month.

Maddie had done that with a shift once, years ago, and told the story herself. Not the emergency calls, not anything that belonged to somebody she'd helped. Just arriving ready to work and discovering she could go home again. Rose asked what she'd done with the unexpected free time.

"Slept," Maddie said.

Several people laughed in immediate agreement. Ethan watched Kit lean toward Ellen to add something, Rose reach for another helping, Maddie accept the dish she was offered without saying she shouldn't. This wasn't a table arranged so she could be told about him. She had her own mornings, mistakes, opinions about what to do with a day that suddenly belonged to her.

Ellen asked whether Ethan still cooked. He looked at the food in front of him, then at Rose, and smiled before answering.

"Yeah."

"Better than the rolls?"

Tyler made a delighted sound. Ethan lowered his fork.

"I was thirteen."

"They weren't terrible," Rose said.

"They were very small," Kit added.

"They didn't rise."

"They didn't have time," Ethan said. "I was hungry."

Maddie looked between them, smiling. "What did you do?"

"Skipped a bit."

"A fairly important bit," Rose told her. "He had the dough ready, then decided the rest of the waiting was optional."

Ethan remembered the bowl against his stomach, the sticky feel of the dough through his fingers, looking at the clock and deciding he could get it into the oven before anybody had to know he was improvising. He'd wanted bread with dinner. He'd also wanted to be the person who could make it, without having to ask Rose to do the slow part for him.

"They were edible," he said.

"They were," Kit agreed. "We ate them."

"Tyler threw one."

Tyler turned toward him. "Into your hand."

"It hit my wrist."

"I apologized."

Ethan laughed, unable to continue sounding injured about something that had happened years ago. Maddie asked whether he'd tried again, and he nodded.

"Mom helped the next time."

"You let it rise the next time," Rose corrected.

"That's what I said."

"No, it isn't." She smiled and offered Maddie the salad. "He could do the rest. He just wanted to eat before it was ready."

Maddie laughed. "That sounds familiar."

He looked at her. She didn't need to invent a childhood with him to have seen the adult version standing near her stove, asking whether the thing she was cooking was nearly done. He'd sometimes waited there to help. Sometimes he'd waited because he liked the company. She knew enough now to tell the difference.

"What do you make most?" Ellen asked.

Ethan answered without trying to make the list impressive. Pasta, vegetables, the things he could do after a long day without turning the kitchen into a new job. Ellen approved of one, asked how he did another, and confessed she'd never managed to keep a particular pan from sticking.

Kit had an opinion. So did Rose. Maddie asked which pan Ellen was using, and the conversation became equipment rather than Ethan's qualifications. He liked the escape enough that he reached for the last bread before Tyler noticed it.

Hannah noticed first and held out her plate. Ethan broke the piece in half, gave her the larger part, and received a suspicious look when she saw him smiling.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing."

She took it and didn't let him have any back when he changed his mind. Tyler laughed, offered him another piece from the basket, and told him to wait for the rolls to rise this time.

"I'm never telling you anything again," Ethan said.

"You didn't tell us. We were there."

That stopped him for a moment. Not sadly. He could see his brother at the kitchen table in the old memory, holding one dense little roll, making him laugh hard enough that he forgot to be angry about the recipe. He'd remembered his own disappointment more clearly than the company he'd had while being disappointed.

Ethan looked around the table, picked up his water, and let Ellen move on to the next question.

Hannah asked whether anybody had photographs of the brothers at fifteen. Tyler groaned. Ethan said no with enough speed that Mrs. Keene began laughing before Rose answered.

"Of course I do."

"Mom."

"What?"

"Nothing," Ethan said, giving up immediately.

Rose took out her phone, searched for a moment, then stopped with a smile that warned both sons they weren't going to enjoy the choice. She turned it toward Maddie first.

The picture showed Ethan sitting on the floor with a project spread around his knees, Tyler behind him trying to hold something in position, Hannah much smaller beside them with one hand planted over the edge of the paper. Ethan remembered the afternoon only when he saw the tape stuck to Tyler's wrist.

"Oh, that," he said.

"You wouldn't use the table," Rose told him.

"It was too small."

"The paper was too big."

Hannah leaned over to see. "What was I doing?"

"Holding it," Tyler said. "Very importantly."

She laughed. The memory was mostly floor and impatience, the certainty that the tape would stick to everything except the thing Ethan wanted, and Tyler promising he was helping while lifting the wrong edge. Hannah had insisted she needed a job, then refused to move when it became inconvenient.

Maddie smiled at the photograph. She didn't pretend to remember the day. She asked Ethan what they'd been making.

He explained, then corrected himself when Tyler supplied the part he'd forgotten. Rose turned the phone toward Ellen. The picture moved down the table in short, careful stages, nobody swiping through the rest. When it reached Hannah she held it longer, pleased to have proof that she'd been in the middle even then.

"I was helping," she said.

"You were," Ethan told her.

"Can you send me that?" Maddie asked Rose.

"Of course." Rose reached for her phone.

"I'm collecting evidence," Maddie told Ethan.

"Against who?"

"Haven't decided yet."

Tyler leaned over. "Start with him."

"Traitor," Ethan said.

Rose sent the photograph before putting her phone away. Ethan felt the small, familiar ache of somebody seeing a piece of his life late, but it didn't swallow the afternoon. Maddie was sitting across from him now. He remembered Rose standing in the doorway to take it. Maddie opened the copy on her own phone, tilted it to see Hannah better, and smiled at something his sister pointed out.

He took another drink and asked Maddie to pass the bread.

A breeze reached beneath the table and cooled Ethan's ankles. He shifted his chair a fraction farther into the shade, then helped Hannah move hers when the sun found the back of her neck. She kept one hand over her glass while he pulled, steadying it with the concentration she'd given the bowls yesterday.

"Here?" he asked.

"Yeah. Thanks."

He sat again. Tyler had moved the bread basket out of the patch of sun and was passing it toward Connor, who'd asked whether the last piece belonged to anyone. Ellen told him to eat it. Katie watched him take it, smiled, and handed him the butter before he could start looking for it.

Ethan could feel the meal slowing in his own body, warmth and food and the relief of staying still. The edge of his plate held a little dressing he'd keep chasing with the bread if somebody didn't move the basket away. He put his fork down, then picked it up again when Rose offered him the vegetables.

The food moved more slowly as people filled up. Plates still held a little of everything. Mr. Donovan looked at the time, said he really would have to go soon, and stayed long enough for Kit to ask the next question. Mrs. Keene finished her water and began explaining the mistake she'd made with a plant she'd been certain would tolerate the sun.

Rose disagreed about how much sun that patch received. Mrs. Keene told her to come over and see it. Maddie asked what the plant was called. Ethan listened until the names stopped meaning anything to him, then turned toward Sophie when she touched his wrist.

"Can you save this?" she asked, showing him the food she hadn't finished.

"You're not leaving?"

"Just for a bit."

"Yeah. I'll put it away."

She smiled. "Thank you."

He got up with her plate and his own. Tyler moved his chair so he could pass without climbing over Hannah, and Ethan thanked him before he could demand credit. In the kitchen he found a container, put Sophie's food inside, and marked the lid with her name using the pen Rose had left by the sink.

Maddie came through with the empty vegetable plate a moment later. She saw him writing and asked whose it was.

"Sophie's. She's coming back."

"Okay." Maddie set the plate down. "Where's the cloth?"

He handed it to her. She wiped the little spill near the counter while he found space in the fridge. Neither tried to empty the kitchen before the others could finish eating. Rose would want the containers kept; some things needed to stay outside; somebody was still going to come in asking where the forks had gone.

Maddie leaned against the counter for a moment, the cloth held loosely in her hand. Through the open door Ethan could hear Hannah objecting to whatever Tyler had just said. His mother smiled toward the sound.

"They're funny together," Maddie said. "I'm not sure Tyler knows how often Hannah wins."

"Yeah."

"You too."

He grinned, a little embarrassed. "We're annoying."

"Sometimes."

He laughed. She smiled back, reached out to brush something from the shoulder of his shirt, and let her hand fall rather than turning the small moment into a claim on it. Ethan stayed beside her while she folded the cloth.

"I'm glad you got to see everybody," he said.

"Me too."

"Not just yesterday. Like this."

"I know." She glanced toward the yard again. "I like Rose. And Kit."

He nodded. The answer warmed him in a place that didn't need a bigger sentence. Maddie didn't have to tell him she understood every part of the family to enjoy being with them. He could carry the empty plate to the sink and go back outside with her.

Ellen wanted the story of yesterday's game, but only after noticing Rose and Maddie exchange a look. Ethan sat down in time to hear Ryan say they'd played well. Marcus agreed, smiling. Tyler made an unhelpful noise from the other side of Hannah.

"They won," Ethan told Ellen.

"I heard that."

"Then why are we discussing it?" Ryan asked, laughing now.

"Because it was fun," Rose said.

Maddie laughed too. She described the first terrible throw, Rose's steady ones, the moment she'd realized they might actually win instead of merely avoiding embarrassment. She got one part of the score wrong. Marcus corrected it gently; she thanked him and continued without making the correction into anything more.

Ethan liked hearing the afternoon from somebody else's place in it. He remembered being beside Sophie, watching the blue bag slide. Maddie remembered how the cloth had felt in her palm, Rose calling encouragement from the other end, thinking she'd thrown too hard and seeing the bag stop just in time. The same game, different parts worth keeping.

Hannah asked whether they could play cards later. Emily said she'd brought them, and Katie said she wanted a game that didn't require getting up every two minutes. Connor agreed with feeling. The adults continued discussing the food while the younger end of the table began negotiating which rules everybody actually knew.

Kit stood to bring the next thing from the grill. Ethan started to get up, but his father shook his head and pointed at his unfinished plate.

"Sit. Eat that first."

He sat. Maddie passed him the vegetables he'd been reaching for. Tyler asked Hannah to move her cup before he knocked it over, and she did. Sophie caught Ethan's eye from beside the gate, lifted a hand to say she'd be back, and received his nod before going.

Around the table there was still shade, still food, still somebody halfway through a story. Ethan settled into the chair he'd finally made comfortable and listened for the part he'd missed.

The cards arrived after the plates had stopped moving.

Emily put the deck in front of Hannah, who removed the rubber band and began sorting out the cards somebody had left backward. Ryan wanted to play immediately. Katie wanted to move away from the food first. Connor, still looking at the empty dish beside his elbow, asked whether there was anything else coming.

"Yes," Rose told him.

He smiled. "Then I'm staying here."

"You can move six feet and come back," Katie said.

Ethan laughed and got up before the discussion could become an actual obstacle. There were enough chairs in the loose circle beyond the table, enough shade for most of them if they stopped spreading their legs into everybody else's space. He took his water and sat with one heel tucked beneath the other chair leg, waiting for his body to stop expecting another thing to carry.

Marcus came over with two bowls. He gave Ethan one, kept the other, and sat beside him.

"Thought you were done," Ethan said.

"I was."

Ethan looked down. Something sweet, with fruit he'd noticed Rose putting aside earlier. He accepted the spoon Natalie brought when she came past and decided he could be done after this instead.

The group moved unevenly. Hannah wanted to keep the cards in order long enough to start properly. Tyler took a chair beside her and tried to inspect the deck before she'd finished. She moved it away. Emily sat on Hannah's other side, taking the box of spoons Katie had been given to return to the kitchen.

"Can we borrow these?" Emily called to Rose.

"Only if they come back."

"They will."

Ethan looked at her. "Spoons?"

She grinned. "You scared?"

"No."

"Good."

She set the clean plastic spoons in the middle of the little table they'd brought between the chairs. There wasn't room for everybody to reach comfortably, so they divided into a first round and people willing to watch while they finished eating. Marcus stayed beside Ethan with his bowl. Natalie moved to stand behind Noah, who had chosen a chair at the table and was checking that Connor understood the rules.

"I know," Connor said. "I remember the spoons part, at least."

"Last time you grabbed two," Noah reminded him.

"That was strategy."

Katie laughed and sat where she could reach without leaning across Hannah. Ethan ate another spoonful and watched the first cards move. Emily dealt, made sure they all had the same number, and put the extra deck beside herself.

It began quietly. Too quietly for a group who'd spent yesterday shouting across the street. Hannah inspected her hand with more concentration than she needed; Tyler watched the spoons instead of the cards; Connor looked at Katie whenever she made a sound, apparently expecting her expression to tell him what he should keep.

Ethan saw Emily reach first. The movement was small, almost casual, one spoon sliding toward her wrist. Hannah saw it too. She took the next. Katie moved immediately afterward, and the entire table became hands.

Tyler lost.

He looked at his empty fingers, then at Hannah. She held her spoon up delicately.

"Oh, come on," he said.

She laughed so hard she had to put it down. Ethan joined her, his own bowl balanced precariously on one knee until Marcus reached over to steady it.

"Thanks."

"Finish eating before you hurt yourself."

Ethan took the bowl back and did. Tyler insisted he hadn't been trying, which prompted three people to tell him that was why he lost. He accepted the next hand with exaggerated dignity, and Hannah leaned toward Emily to say something that made them both laugh before the first card moved.

Maddie came past with Rose, carrying the empty bowls they were finally allowed to take. Ethan handed his over and thanked them. Rose asked whether everybody had enough to drink. Emily held up her bottle. Noah looked for his and found Natalie holding it for him so it wouldn't be knocked beneath the table.

"Here."

"Thanks."

She stayed standing behind him, following the game without pretending she couldn't see his cards. He turned the hand slightly away from her. Natalie laughed and looked toward the other end instead.

Ethan joined the next round. Marcus took the place beside him. More people meant bringing the spoons closer and remembering who had to pass which way. They rearranged until Katie could see everybody's hands and Ryan stopped complaining that his chair was too far from the table.

"No lunging," Emily told them. "They're plastic."

Ryan laughed. "I'm not going to break one."

"Good."

He didn't. He lost to Ethan instead, which was considerably more satisfying. Ethan saw Katie move, took the spoon nearest him, and leaned back with it hidden against his palm while the others caught up. Ryan was watching his cards. By the time he looked up, there wasn't anything left in the middle.

Ethan opened his hand.

Ryan stared at it, then at him. "You could've said something."

"Why?"

Marcus laughed. Ryan did too, shook his head, and began collecting the cards. Ethan let the small victory be exactly as ridiculous as it was. Nobody needed another Manhunt to make a Sunday afternoon competitive.

The rounds loosened. People went for water and came back. Noah took a turn watching, Natalie sat, and the two of them argued quietly about whether he'd noticed the first spoon go before she did. Ethan listened long enough to realize neither had any way to prove it, then concentrated on the cards Connor was trying to pass him three at a time.

"Just one."

"Sorry."

Connor sorted them. Katie laughed at him, then discovered she'd passed the card she'd meant to keep and tried to get it back. Hannah refused with immediate delight. Katie gave up, smiling, and managed to win the round anyway.

Beyond their chairs the older conversations continued. Kit's voice, Ellen's laugh, Mrs. Keene making somebody repeat a name. The afternoon wasn't waiting for the younger group to do anything interesting. Ethan could play badly for half an hour and still hear his family a few feet away.

Eventually the spoons went back into the box. Hannah counted them because Rose had asked for them all, discovered one beneath Tyler's chair, and made him reach for it. He handed it over without arguing, then put his empty cup on the little table.

"I'm too full," he said.

"You asked for more," Hannah reminded him.

"I had room then."

Ethan nodded with sympathy he didn't particularly feel. His own stomach was comfortable; somebody else's decision to take a second helping wasn't going to prevent him enjoying it. He leaned back and turned his face toward the shade, letting the conversation find another subject.

It found packing first. Emily had a bag she hadn't emptied, Sophie was still dealing with washing, Noah had brought home a book he meant to finish and hadn't. Natalie asked which book, recognized the title, and said she hadn't liked the middle. Noah turned toward her with an immediate defense that became a question halfway out of his mouth.

"How far did you get?"

"All of it."

"Oh."

She smiled. "I can dislike it and finish it."

"I didn't say you couldn't."

Ethan laughed at the speed with which they'd found familiar ground. Natalie explained what bothered her. Noah listened, interrupted once, apologized, and let her finish. When he answered, he wasn't trying to turn the afternoon into a class. He just liked the thing she didn't, and wanted to know which part they'd read differently.

Natalie rested the book argument for a moment and admitted she was thinking about taking something extra when she went back. Noah asked what, then whether she had room for it. She made a face.

"That's the problem."

"Then why—"

"Because I want to."

He nodded, conceding that much. Ethan watched her turn the bottle slowly between her hands. She wasn't asking Noah to win the argument for her; she was trying to say the part that made the decision difficult.

"I keep thinking if I don't, I'll wish I had."

"And if you do?" Ethan asked.

"I might wish I'd slept instead."

Emily laughed in recognition. "That's work too. Taking something because you can, then having no time for anything else."

Lucia nodded. She'd done it. So had Tyler, who supplied a complaint about the shift he'd agreed to cover before checking what else was happening that day. Nobody asked him to pretend the money hadn't mattered.

"I don't mind being busy," Emily said. "I just don't want it to be the only thing I can tell anybody about."

Ethan looked at her, hearing more than a complaint about one bad week. She smiled faintly and rubbed the back of her hand over one knee.

"What else would you want?" he asked.

"I don't know. That's the annoying part."

"Today?" Hannah suggested.

Emily turned toward her. Hannah looked briefly uncertain, then continued before somebody else could decide whether she meant it seriously.

"Like doing this. You can tell people about this."

Emily's smile warmed. "Yeah. I can."

Noah leaned back and told Natalie she didn't have to decide the class in the next five minutes. She looked at him, laughed, and said she wasn't trying to. It was nice to mention it somewhere it didn't become a form she had to fill in immediately.

Ethan understood. He'd spent enough time making calendars fit to know that wanting something didn't create room for it. Still, there was a difference between saying what might be good and promising to have it worked out. Emily could want an afternoon without knowing how to arrange all the afternoons after it. Natalie could like a subject and decide the extra work wasn't worth it this time.

Katie tipped her head back. "I love you both. I'm not reading it."

"You don't have to," Natalie said, laughing.

"Excellent."

That gave Emily a way to ask what Katie actually wanted to do before going back. Katie wanted to spend one day outside without anybody telling her to hurry up. Connor immediately suggested a route they both knew. She considered it, asked about the muddy part, and began making it shorter before he'd finished explaining the longer version.

Ethan listened with a smile. They weren't arranging a permanent future together or promising to recreate every childhood afternoon. They could want a walk and disagree about where to start. It didn't need him in it to be worth hearing.

Lucia moved her chair into the space Sophie had left. She'd been talking to Ellen and had acquired the name of a dish she meant to try. Emily asked whether she'd send it. Lucia said yes and took out her phone to write it down before forgetting, rather than pretending she would remember the whole conversation later.

"What're you doing tomorrow?" she asked Ethan after putting it away.

"Nothing big."

"Good."

"You?"

"Depends. I might come over."

"You can."

She smiled. "I know."

Hannah asked whether that meant everybody would be there. Nobody gave her the answer all at once. Ryan wasn't sure about the morning. Natalie had something to finish. Connor could probably come later. Katie needed to check. Hannah nodded through the different versions without looking as disappointed as Ethan had expected her to.

"Later's fine," she said.

Tyler bumped her shoulder. "We live here."

"I know where you live."

The speed of the answer made Emily laugh. Hannah grinned and pulled her legs clear when Tyler nudged her shoe. Ethan stretched one foot toward them and received an immediate shove against his ankle for interfering.

"Stay out of it," Hannah told him.

He lifted both hands, laughing. She returned to her seat with the pleased expression of somebody who'd put both brothers where she wanted them. Ethan liked watching her take the space without asking whether she'd been allowed enough already.

Sophie came back through the gate carrying her phone in one hand and nothing else. Ethan saw her before she saw the group. She paused to greet Ellen, answered a question from Rose, and then came toward them with the relieved look of someone who'd actually finished what she'd gone to do.

"Food's put away," Ethan told her.

"I know. Your mom told me."

"Good."

She sat beside him when Lucia moved her chair an inch to make room. Ethan offered his water, and Sophie took it after checking he didn't want the last of it. He shook his head. She drank, gave it back, and stretched her hands over her knees.

"Done?" Emily asked.

"Most of it."

"That's enough."

Sophie nodded emphatically. Ethan didn't ask for a list. She was here with her shoulders down, her phone going into the pocket instead of staying in her hand. He was happy to let the completed chores remain somewhere else for a while.

The conversation wandered toward places they'd like to go when nobody was busy. A train journey somebody had mentioned. A beach that wasn't worth the drive if the weather turned. Ryan wanted somewhere with enough room to play a game. Katie said she wanted somewhere nobody would make her play one.

"You played yesterday," Ryan said.

"Because I wanted to."

"That's what I mean."

"Then we agree."

He laughed and let it go. Connor asked Ethan whether there were places like the woods near the loft. Ethan shook his head at the comparison and explained that getting out to a trail was a different sort of trip. There were places he liked. It wasn't the same as walking a few streets and finding this.

"Could be nice, though," Katie said.

"Yeah."

"Someday."

She went back to asking Connor about the route he'd mentioned earlier. Ethan pictured them on a trail with him, Katie complaining about the heat, Connor wanting to go farther. Then Katie asked about the muddy part again, and he returned to the conversation happening in front of him.

Hannah listened, then asked whether he missed having so much close by. Ethan thought about it before answering.

"Sometimes. Different things are close there."

"Like school?"

"Not that close," he said, laughing.

She smiled. "I keep looking at things and not understanding how far apart they are."

"What things?"

"Schools. Courses. Just looking." She added the last part quickly, as if she'd heard how much of a decision the first words might sound like.

"That's fine."

"I know. I'm not picking anything."

"Good," Tyler said. "You'd have to tell me first."

Hannah looked at him. "No, I wouldn't."

He laughed and held up a hand. "Okay."

She went back to Emily, who was asking what she'd liked looking at. Hannah talked about wanting to see what people actually did in the classes rather than only the photographs on the website. Natalie agreed with feeling. Ethan listened without selecting a university for his sister or supplying a future she could grow into on his schedule.

She could look. She could change her mind. Right now she was explaining something to Emily with her whole face animated, no trace of the cup she'd held too tightly beside the canopy yesterday.

Marcus stood to stretch and asked who wanted to throw something around. Nobody moved quickly. Then Connor stood, Katie followed, and Ryan joined because the invitation had become a possibility instead of an abstract question. They found a soft ball Hannah brought from just inside the house and took the clear space beyond the chairs.

Ethan went too. Not running, not competing, simply joining the uneven circle. Sophie stayed seated with Lucia and Emily, talking while Noah helped Natalie find somewhere to put her feet. Ethan caught the first throw at chest height and sent it to Hannah, who'd come out after deciding the cards could wait.

She caught it against her palms and passed it to Marcus. He caught one-handed, looked at Ryan, and threw with just enough speed to make him pay attention. Ryan grinned and sent it toward Katie. Connor had to lean around her when the return arrived between them, and they both laughed at the near collision.

The throws found a pace. Someone had to stop for a child passing through. Kit called for a little more room near the table, and the circle shifted without complaint. Ethan caught a high one, took a single step back, and sent it gently toward Hannah rather than using the height she'd given him against her.

"Too easy," she told him.

"Fine."

The next was harder. She caught it, smiling, and threw it straight back before he'd fully lowered his hands. It struck his palm cleanly. He laughed and pointed at her with the ball before sending it on.

She didn't need him to make every game easier. He knew that. Sometimes knowing still had to reach his hands.

After a while they drifted back to the chairs. Ethan sat beside Sophie again and accepted the space she made without asking what he'd missed. He could hear enough to find his way in: Emily talking about a room that always got too warm, Natalie remembering a window that wouldn't open, Noah admitting he'd complained about the opposite problem all winter.

Kit came over to collect the empty box Emily had used for the spoons. Hannah told him they were all there. He checked the lid, nodded, and asked Ethan whether he'd had enough water.

"Yeah."

His father looked at the nearly empty bottle. Ethan smiled, gave in, and stood to refill it. Nothing dramatic. Just thirst he'd stopped noticing while there were things to catch and people to listen to.

He paused beside the table, waiting for Rose to finish pouring. Behind him, the chairs scraped as somebody made room for somebody else. Sophie laughed. Hannah answered Tyler loudly enough that he heard it without turning.

Kit put the box down beside the plates and stayed near him, one hand resting on the back of an empty chair. Ethan took his water from Rose, thanked her, and remained there for a moment, comfortable enough not to hurry back.

Kit moved the empty chair with his foot.

"Come sit with me a minute."

Ethan looked back toward the others. Nobody needed him. Hannah had claimed the deck again, Sophie was telling Lucia something with both hands, and Tyler had turned his chair to make more room for the people talking behind him. Ethan sat beside his father with the cold bottle between his palms.

For a while Kit didn't say anything. He took a drink, put the cap on, and watched Connor try to explain a rule Hannah evidently didn't believe. The chair creaked when he shifted his weight. Ethan recognized the sound from a hundred evenings when nothing much had happened, the little give beneath his father's shoulder, the way Kit moved his elbow clear of whoever sat beside him. He put his bottle down and stopped holding himself ready to get up. Ethan could see the smile before his father turned it toward him.

"Good weekend?"

"Yeah."

"Got enough sleep?"

"Some."

Kit laughed quietly. Ethan smiled and looked down at the damp ring his bottle had left on his trousers. The questions weren't difficult. He'd been answering much larger ones in his head without realizing he could stop long enough to sit beside Dad and discuss whether he'd slept.

"Your legs recovered?" Kit asked.

"Mostly."

"Mostly."

"We did a lot of running."

"I gathered."

Ethan grinned. Kit had seen them come back Friday, dirty and thirsty and talking too loudly over one another. He'd probably heard enough of the account over breakfast to reconstruct the entire game, provided he could work out which parts Tyler had exaggerated.

Hannah laughed across the yard. Ethan looked toward her automatically. She was pointing at something Emily held, her head tipped back, no effort to make the sound smaller. Kit watched too.

"She had a good time," he said.

"Yeah. She was really good."

"I heard."

"She was." Ethan felt himself become earnest and didn't bother stepping back from it. "She kept figuring things out. Not just following me."

Kit nodded. He knew his daughter. Ethan wasn't bringing him information he couldn't have discovered another way, only a piece of the evening he'd been there to see. It felt good to give it to him.

A plate shifted on the table behind them. Kit reached back to move it out of the breeze, then settled into his chair again. Ethan rolled the bottle between his hands, listening to the faint, dry sound of someone sweeping inside the kitchen.

"How's everything going?" his father asked.

"School?"

"That too."

Ethan took a breath. The broad answer wanted to be fine. It usually was. Fine contained classes and things he'd understood and things he hadn't, the work waiting when he got back, people whose schedules he now knew well enough to guess whether they'd answer a message. It didn't contain much anybody could talk to him about.

"Busy," he said. "Good. I think."

Kit waited.

"I still like it."

"Good."

"Sometimes I don't like how much I don't know."

His father smiled a little. "That part doesn't go away."

"Great."

"Not all of it."

Ethan laughed under his breath, then looked toward the table again. Rose was leaning close enough to hear Mrs. Keene without making her raise her voice. Maddie stood beside them, holding a dish she'd been trying to take inside for several minutes. Nobody was allowing the conversation to finish just because her hands were full.

"I don't mind learning it," Ethan said. "I just want to be useful before I've learned everything."

"You are."

He glanced at Kit.

"In the ways you're allowed to be," his father added. "I know you're not doing everybody else's job."

"I'm not."

"I know."

Kit said it without warning in his voice. Ethan loosened his grip on the bottle. There were rules he'd had to learn and limits he respected because people mattered more than wanting to prove something. Dad could know he was impatient without assuming he was reckless.

"What do you like best?" Kit asked.

Ethan considered it. Not the answer that sounded the most ambitious. The one he'd actually missed when he was tired enough to wonder why he kept choosing the early start.

"Seeing people work together," he said. "When somebody notices a thing somebody else needs. Or explains something and it makes sense all at once."

Kit nodded slowly.

"And learning what to look for. I like that."

"You always did."

Ethan smiled, uncomfortable with how much he wanted the simple recognition. He drank, buying himself a few seconds, and lowered the bottle when Kit began telling him about a problem he'd spent too long trying to solve by himself that week. Nothing dramatic. Something that would've taken half the time if he'd asked the right question sooner.

"Did you?" Ethan asked.

"Eventually."

"Dad."

"I know."

They laughed together. Ethan liked the ordinary admission more than he would've liked being told his father had always known what to do. Kit could still waste an afternoon. Ethan could still ask him for help.

Kit asked whether the loft was still working out. Ethan nodded, then tried to describe the little things that made living there less like borrowing a place. Where he put the things he needed in the morning. Which light he left on when he'd be back late. The cupboard he'd finally stopped opening when he meant to reach for the one beside it.

His father listened as though the cupboard mattered. Ethan found himself smiling halfway through the explanation, embarrassed by how little it took to keep him talking once somebody asked the right question.

"Sounds like yours," Kit said.

"Yeah."

"Got everything you need?"

"Mostly."

"What's missing?"

Ethan considered. Nothing he couldn't sort out himself. A few things he hadn't bought because there was always something more urgent, a shelf arrangement he kept meaning to change, the ordinary inconveniences of a home that hadn't been lived in for years yet.

"I can do it," he said.

"I didn't say you couldn't."

He looked at Kit. His father took another drink, giving the words room without turning them into an argument.

"I'll ask," Ethan said after a moment. "If I need something."

"Good."

He meant it more than he had the automatic answer. Kit had let him leave, helped where he could, trusted him to work things out. Ethan could let that remain help instead of treating every offer as evidence he hadn't become independent properly.

"Could use the name of that thing you used on the drawer," he admitted.

Kit looked at him. "Which drawer?"

Ethan explained with his hands, the catching edge, the point where it stopped, his confidence that it was a simple fix right up until he tried doing it. Kit asked two questions, understood the shape of the problem, and told him to send a photograph before buying anything.

"Okay."

"Don't force it."

"I haven't."

His father raised his eyebrows. Ethan smiled and looked down at the bottle.

"Not much."

Kit laughed, shook his head, and repeated the request for a photograph. Ethan took his phone out long enough to make himself a note, then put it away. When he got back, there'd be one small piece of home he could ask Dad about without waiting until the thing had become impossible.

Across the yard Tyler looked up, saw the two of them, and pointed at the empty bottle beside Kit's chair. Kit shook his head. Tyler took it anyway on his way past, put it with the recycling, and stopped behind Ethan long enough to squeeze both shoulders.

"Ow," Ethan said, mostly because he wanted a complaint on record.

Tyler eased his hands immediately. "Actually?"

"No."

"Then stop it."

He rubbed the back of Ethan's neck, carefully above the warm patch, and went to find out what Rose was asking for. Ethan watched him go. He could feel his father's glance without turning to meet it.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Kit's smile was small and impossible to argue with. Ethan leaned back and let him have it.

Rose called his name a minute later. Not urgently, only because she'd found the bowl she'd been looking for and wanted him to take it inside. Ethan stood. Kit moved his chair clear of the route, touched the back of Ethan's arm as he passed, and said quietly that he was glad he'd come home.

"Me too," Ethan answered.

It was easy to say standing up, with something to carry. He took the bowl from Rose and waited while she wrapped the spoon so it wouldn't fall out. Maddie passed him in the doorway with her own dish, both of them turning sideways at the same time and then laughing when neither had made more space.

"Go," she told him.

He went first. Set the bowl on the counter. Found a place for hers. Behind him the yard continued talking, the conversation he'd left carrying on without needing his chair occupied.

Rose came into the kitchen with a cloth over her shoulder. She looked at the dishes, then at Ethan's hands as he began finding lids.

"You don't have to do that now."

"I know."

"Then leave it."

He obeyed, reluctantly enough to make her smile. There was a small patch of sauce on his thumb. He washed it off, dried his hands, and turned to find her still watching him.

"What?"

"You look tired."

"I am tired."

"Good tired?"

"Yeah."

She nodded, accepting the distinction. Ethan leaned one hip against the counter while she put the cloth down. The kitchen was cooler than the yard, the air moving through the open window and across his damp hands. He could hear Maddie outside asking Ellen something about the dish she'd brought.

"Are you eating properly there?" Rose asked.

He smiled. "Mostly."

"Ethan."

"Yes. I am."

"Not just coffee."

"No."

She looked at him a moment longer, then reached past him for the container he'd been about to close. He moved away so she could reach comfortably. Her arm brushed his chest; the contact was so familiar that he didn't think of it until she stayed there, close enough to rest a hand against his cheek.

He leaned into it before he could decide whether he was too old to.

Rose smiled. "You can call when you're tired too."

"I do."

"Sometimes."

He looked down. She didn't make him look up again. Outside, somebody laughed, then asked where Connor had put the cards. The sound gave the kitchen a little privacy without making it silent.

"I don't always know what to say," Ethan admitted.

"You can tell me what you had for lunch."

He laughed softly.

"Or complain about something," she added. "You're good at that."

"Mom."

"There you are."

He shook his head, smiling, and let her draw him close. The hug wasn't long. Her hand settled between his shoulder blades; he rested his chin above her shoulder and breathed in the smell of her shampoo beneath the kitchen heat. When she stepped back, he didn't try to finish the moment with a speech.

"I'll call," he said.

"I know."

She picked up the cloth again, pressed it into his hand, and asked him to wipe the spill near the sink before somebody put a plate in it. He did. She took the bowl outside. Ethan stayed long enough to rinse the cloth properly and hang it where it belonged.

Before he could leave, Rose came back to ask whether he wanted the sweatshirt she'd found folded with the clean things. He'd left it here months ago and kept remembering it only when he reached for something that wasn't in his cupboard in Los Angeles.

"Which one?" he asked, though he thought he knew.

"The blue one."

"Oh. Yeah."

She brought it from the chair just inside the hall. Ethan took it, unfolded it by the shoulders, and looked at the faint mark near the cuff. He remembered trying to wash it out, then forgetting the stain as soon as he'd put it on again. The fabric had gone soft at the elbows. He slipped one hand into the pocket and found nothing, which was probably fortunate.

"I was going to send it," Rose said.

"I kept meaning to ask."

"I know."

He rubbed his thumb along the seam. It wasn't a childhood relic. He'd bought it himself, worn it through ordinary days, complained when somebody borrowed it without asking. Still, the familiar weight made him want to put it on despite the heat.

"I'll take it," he said.

"Leave it with your things, then. Before somebody puts it away again."

He nodded and folded it over his arm. In the doorway he met Maddie coming in with two glasses. She glanced at the sweatshirt and smiled.

"Found something?"

"Forgotten something."

"Same difference."

He laughed. She put the glasses down, took the folded cloth from him while he reached for the packet of napkins behind her, and handed it back without making a decision about whether he had room in his bag. They could work that out tomorrow. There would be a way to fit one sweatshirt, even if he had to wear it onto the plane.

Rose went outside again. Ethan put the napkins where she'd asked and found Maddie still at the sink, rinsing the glasses rather than stacking them where somebody might knock them over.

"Need help?" he asked.

"No. Go sit down."

"Everybody keeps telling me that."

"Maybe try it."

He grinned. She smiled back and touched his wrist with the back of her dry hand. He stayed long enough to lean against her shoulder, an awkward half-hug with the sweatshirt between them. Maddie turned, made it less awkward, and pressed her cheek briefly against his temple.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah."

He was. Full and a little warm and tired of explaining tiredness as though something had to be wrong. He could hear the people outside through the open door; he could see Rose's cloth where he'd hung it. Maddie's hand rested on his back without urging him toward the yard or keeping him in the kitchen.

"Good," she said when he eased away.

She returned to the glasses. Ethan set the sweatshirt aside where he wouldn't forget it, safely out of reach of the wet counter, and turned toward the door. Hannah stood there, waiting.

"Are you done?"

"With what?"

"Being in here."

He laughed. "Yeah."

"Come look at something."

She took his wrist, let go once he was following, and brought him outside. Emily had gone to speak to her mother, and the cards were back in Hannah's hands. She wanted to show him a way of shuffling she'd been trying to learn. The first attempt bent half the deck without bringing the halves together.

Ethan sat beside her. "Loosen your fingers."

"I am."

"A little more."

She tried again. Three cards escaped onto her lap. Tyler, arriving behind them, caught one against the chair before it fell farther and handed it back without saying anything.

"Don't laugh," Hannah told him.

"I didn't."

"You were going to."

"I was waiting to see if it worked."

Ethan laughed and received her look instead. He held up his hands, then asked whether he could show her. She gave him the deck. He divided it, curved the edges carefully, and let the cards fall together in a much less impressive wave than he'd intended.

Tyler made a small sound.

"Don't," Ethan said.

Hannah laughed, took the cards back, and tried once more. This time enough of them joined that she looked up before she'd finished, delighted. Ethan caught the sliding corner with one finger and nudged it back into line.

"There."

She did it again, slower. Better. Tyler sat on her other side, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and watched until she could finish without looking to either of them for the next instruction.

"Now do the other bit," he said.

"What other bit?"

"The bridge."

Ethan shook his head. "Let her do this first."

"I want to try," Hannah said.

He looked at her, then surrendered the objection with a smile. Of course she did. Tyler took the deck only when she offered it, demonstrated badly enough that she laughed again, and gave it back before he could recover his pride with a second attempt.

Ethan stayed where he was. The light had shifted across the yard while he'd been inside. It caught the fine hairs near Hannah's temple and the edge of Tyler's sleeve, made the table behind them look brighter than the shade beneath their chairs. He could hear Kit and Marcus talking near the gate, Maddie laughing with Rose.

"Will you come back before Christmas?" Hannah asked without looking up from the cards.

Ethan took a breath. "I don't know yet."

She nodded, bent the deck too far, and stopped before it spilled.

"I'll try," he said.

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"I know." She looked up then. "I just want you to."

He nodded. There wasn't a better answer he could promise honestly. Flights cost money. School took time he couldn't rearrange by wanting it. He could try, check, ask, keep her in mind while doing the practical things instead of letting missing her become something he only felt afterward.

"I want to too," he said.

Hannah smiled a little and handed him the cards that had ended up facing the wrong way. Tyler reached behind her chair and squeezed Ethan's shoulder once, harder than he needed to, then let go before either could turn it into a conversation.

Ethan sorted the cards. Hannah watched his hands, then took them back and tried the shuffle again. The sound was soft and familiar, paper against paper, interrupted by a laugh when one stubborn corner refused to settle.

For the next few minutes nobody asked him when he'd come back. Tyler complained about a mark on his shoe. Hannah insisted it had been there before the water balloons. Ethan said he remembered neither of them owning clean shoes for very long and earned two objections at once.

He laughed, moved his feet out of Tyler's reach, and stayed in the chair.

By the time they ate again, nobody could agree on whether it counted as dinner.

Connor called it dinner because there was a plate. Katie said the plate contained things he'd been eating all afternoon. Tyler took a piece of bread, listened to both sides, and settled the question by asking Rose whether anything else needed coming outside.

"Just that bowl," she said.

He fetched it. Ethan moved his chair so there'd be room, then stayed standing to pass things to the people who hadn't quite got comfortable enough to reach. It was an easier meal, smaller portions assembled from what remained. The table covering had acquired a dark ring near one corner and a scatter of crumbs Hannah kept brushing into her palm.

The light came slantwise through the yard. It warmed Ethan's forearm, made him turn the chair a little, and left the kitchen doorway looking darker than it had all day. Somewhere nearby somebody had started cooking their own dinner. He could smell it when the breeze changed.

Mr. Donovan had already gone, taking his bowl and the apology he'd never quite stopped making. Ellen stood near the gate with Rose, halfway through leaving in the way people did when the next sentence seemed worth staying for. Mrs. Keene had accepted a container with some food in it, refused a second, and was trying to make Kit take back the larger portion of the thing she'd brought.

"You keep it," he told her.

"We won't eat all that."

"Neither will we."

Ethan looked at Tyler. Tyler looked at the container. Hannah began laughing before either brother said anything. Kit caught the glance and handed the container to Ethan instead.

"Put that inside."

"Yes, Dad."

He took it in, found a place in the fridge, and came back to discover Mrs. Keene had accepted something else while arguing about the first thing. Maddie was helping her fit it into a bag. The two women tested the handles, adjusted the containers, and agreed it would hold if she carried it from the bottom.

Ethan offered to take it to the gate. Mrs. Keene said she could manage, then changed her mind when she saw how full his hands weren't. He took the weight from beneath, waited while she made sure she'd collected her phone, and walked with her along the path.

"Lovely weekend," she said.

"Yeah."

"Don't disappear for too long."

"I'll try not to."

She looked at him, then patted his arm. No demand for a date he didn't have. He handed the bag back once they were clear, stayed until her grip was secure, and returned to the yard as Ellen finally reached the gate with Rose.

Ellen hugged him, told him to look after himself, and left before he could offer the same promise a second time. She'd already heard it at the table. Rose watched her go for a moment, then turned back and asked who'd moved the lid she'd been holding.

Ethan found it on the chair where she'd put it.

Mrs. Alvarez stopped at the gate as Ethan turned back. She'd come to collect a dish she'd left earlier, certain it was somewhere here and equally certain Rose hadn't thrown it away. Ethan remembered seeing it beneath the table. He found it, brought it over, and watched her run one finger along the edge to make sure it was hers.

"That one," she said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

She tucked it into the bag against her hip and asked whether Maddie was still there. Ethan pointed toward the kitchen. Mrs. Alvarez went to say good night, and he followed far enough to hear her asking for the name of the person Maddie had mentioned at the table.

Maddie supplied it, then explained the connection again. Rose listened while drying her hands. Ethan stayed with the empty container he was carrying and tried to follow how many people could turn out to know somebody else through work, a friend, one ordinary conversation he'd missed while eating.

He liked that he couldn't follow all of it. Maddie had arrived here with him on Friday. She'd now had enough conversations without him that people came looking for her by name. Mrs. Alvarez wasn't asking Ethan to fetch his mother so she could say something about him. She wanted to finish a story she'd been telling Maddie.

He put the container down, took the cloth Rose handed him, and dried the little wet patch beneath it. Maddie was laughing at the answer to her question. Mrs. Alvarez mimed a movement with both hands, looked down at the bowl she was holding, and laughed at herself when she realized she'd nearly let it slide.

"Here," Ethan said, reaching only far enough to steady it.

"Thank you. Again."

She caught the dish properly and went back to talking. Ethan smiled, left the cloth folded beside the sink, and let them finish without him.

The Riffraff hadn't left. Most had reached the soft, stubborn part of a gathering when getting up seemed like more work than staying. Noah was looking through the cards to make sure none had slipped beneath a chair. Natalie watched him without helping until he found one beside her shoe, then picked it up for him with a smile that made him shake his head.

Lucia had taken off one shoe to rub the side of her foot. Emily was helping her find the place it had been pinching. Sophie sat near Ethan's empty chair with her hands folded over her stomach, looking comfortably unproductive.

"Your seat's going," she warned when he approached.

He looked at Tyler, who'd put a foot on its edge.

"Move."

"I'm resting."

"So am I."

Ethan lifted the ankle gently and set it back on the ground. Tyler allowed it, which spoiled the argument before it could begin. Ethan sat. Sophie leaned against his shoulder for a moment, then moved so he could reach the drink she'd saved beside his chair.

"Thanks."

"You left it."

"I know."

He drank, watching Marcus carry the empty bowl toward the house. Marcus's mother had gone a little earlier, taking Rose's thanks and a container she'd promised to return. Marcus hadn't been sent with her. Ethan liked the sight of him moving through the familiar gate on his own terms, deciding to stay because he wanted to.

Ryan asked whether anyone wanted another game. Nobody answered quickly enough to encourage him. He smiled and leaned back, apparently willing to let the question fail.

"I could beat you sitting down," Katie said after a moment.

"Yeah, that's generally how cards work."

"I know."

Connor laughed. Emily offered them the deck; Ryan considered it, then said later, which caused more surprise than the original suggestion. Ethan looked at him. Ryan shrugged.

"I'm comfortable."

That settled it. Nobody needed to explain the unusual decision. A chair, enough food, the evening finally cooling: Ethan could understand the case for not turning any of it into a result.

Kit and Rose sat with Maddie near the table. They'd finished the urgent tasks and abandoned the rest. Maddie had her shoes back on, one leg crossed over the other, her glass balanced against her knee. Kit was telling her something about the street yesterday, smiling before he'd reached the part he found funny. Ethan couldn't hear every word. He could hear enough of Maddie's answer to know she was contradicting his version, and that made him smile too.

Hannah brought out a light sweatshirt and pulled it on without being reminded. Tyler watched, opened his mouth, and closed it when she looked directly at him.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Then stop looking."

He grinned and turned away. Ethan shifted his chair so Hannah could fit between them instead of standing behind his shoulder. She sat with a relieved breath, stretched her legs, and asked Emily whether she'd send another photograph.

"The blurry one?"

"It's not that blurry."

"You can't see Connor's face."

Connor leaned forward. "Then I approve."

Katie laughed, and Emily took out her phone to find it. The photograph passed from person to person without anybody standing them up to recreate it. Ethan saw a smear of movement, Lucia laughing, the bright edge of a balloon somebody had missed. He liked it more than he expected.

"Send both," he said.

Emily did. He felt his phone move against his thigh and left it there. There was no need to stand outside a photograph's memory while the people in it were still beside him.

The conversation found an old teacher none of them had thought about for a while. Sophie remembered a phrase she'd used. Tyler insisted she'd said something different. Natalie settled the matter by repeating the instruction in a tone so accurate that Noah put his head down laughing.

Ethan remembered the room before the words: too warm near the window, the scratched edge of a desk, Sophie turning around to borrow something he knew she'd brought herself and misplaced. He mentioned that part. She told him she'd always given it back.

"Eventually," he said.

"You didn't need it while I had it."

"I might have."

She smiled, unrepentant. Tyler supplied a story Ethan had forgotten about being asked to explain why both of them had the same wrong answer. Ethan said it had been Tyler's answer. Tyler said Ethan had copied it voluntarily, which was true enough to make everybody laugh before he could defend himself.

He didn't mind. He remembered being annoyed at the time, certain there'd been an injustice because the teacher hadn't accepted the distinction between copying and checking. Now he could hear how he'd sounded. Fifteen-year-old confidence hadn't always been useful.

Sophie nudged him. "You were furious."

"So were you."

"I wasn't involved."

"You laughed."

"I was involved in that part."

Her smile softened when he looked at her. Ethan smiled back, accepting the account. They'd spent years doing ordinary things together; not every memory had to make them admirable to be worth keeping.

Ethan got up to stretch and found the place beneath his chair warmer than the air above it. He moved his glass out of the way with one foot, bent to retrieve a napkin before it could blow across the yard, and stayed standing for a moment with his hands against the small of his back. Sophie looked up at him, smiled, and held her empty cup toward him when he asked if she wanted anything. He took it with his own. In the kitchen he refilled both, watched the water catch the light near the rim, and carried them back slowly enough not to spill. There was no task waiting afterward. He could put her cup in her hand and sit down again while the conversation continued where he'd left it.

The air cooled by slow degrees. Somebody shut a window in the next house. Kit asked Hannah to bring the empty bottles to the bag, and she enlisted Tyler without pretending she couldn't carry them herself. Ethan watched his brother stand with a complaint that had no force behind it, collect the ones near their chairs, and follow her.

Hannah asked Emily what it was like going somewhere you didn't know anybody. Not loudly. Ethan caught the question because he'd leaned back at the same moment and the conversation near his other ear had stopped.

Emily thought before answering. "Weird at first."

"How long?"

"Depends."

Hannah made a face. Emily laughed gently, recognizing the unhelpfulness of it, and tried again.

"I found one person I could sit with. Then she knew someone, and I knew someone else. It wasn't everybody at once."

"Did you have to keep going up to people?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes they came over."

Hannah nodded, turning the edge of her sleeve back over her wrist. "I hate when you can't think of anything to say."

"Me too."

Ethan looked over. Emily was resting her arms on her knees, facing Hannah properly without making the rest of them wait for a serious conversation to be completed.

"You don't seem like it," Hannah said.

"That's because I know you."

Hannah smiled. Emily bumped her knee lightly against the side of Hannah's chair and asked what had made her think of it. Hannah mentioned the people she'd talked to at the canopy, the story she hadn't understood, the relief when somebody asked her something she actually knew the answer to.

"They were nice," she said quickly.

"Good."

"I just didn't know where to put myself."

Emily nodded. "I get that."

She didn't offer a trick that would've made yesterday simple. She told Hannah about sitting beside somebody for several days before discovering they'd both been trying to decide whether to say hello. Hannah laughed at that, surprised enough that Ethan could see the tension leave her mouth.

"What'd you say?"

"Asked what she'd missed. I thought she'd been absent."

"Had she?"

"No. I'd just been looking in the wrong place."

Hannah laughed again. Ethan smiled at his bottle and let the conversation remain theirs. Tyler, on her other side, was listening too, quieter than he'd been while the photographs were being passed around.

Emily asked Hannah to send her the picture she'd taken from behind the chairs. Hannah took out her phone, found it, and immediately began explaining why the angle wasn't as bad as it looked. Emily leaned closer. The uncertain conversation became a familiar one without anybody having to announce that Hannah had done well.

Lucia put her shoe back on and said she should go soon. Emily looked at the time. Katie needed to take something home before she forgot it. The evening began finding its exits in small, practical pieces.

Ethan stood with Lucia when she got up. She hugged him, held on just long enough for him to feel the weight of it, and then leaned back to ask whether he'd be around tomorrow.

"Yeah."

"Text me."

"I will."

"Not when you've already decided to go somewhere."

He smiled. "Before."

"Good."

She said good night to the others and went to thank Kit and Rose. Emily followed a few minutes later. Noah and Natalie left with a discussion still going, both turning back to say good night without stopping the next sentence. Marcus stayed to help move the bowl he'd just remembered he'd promised his mother to bring, then went with Ryan.

No one treated the gate as a place for a final account of the weekend. There was still Monday. Some people would come over. Some might not. Ethan could tell them he was glad he'd seen them without asking the evening to hold still until everybody had been properly grateful.

Katie found her missing container beneath a chair. Connor found the lid in the kitchen after three people told him where to look. They left together, laughing about why he'd put it there in the first place. Sophie waited while Ethan brought her the bag she'd almost forgotten.

"Thank you."

"You'd have come back for it."

"Probably."

She hugged him, her cheek against his shoulder. He rested a hand at the back of her head for a moment, then let her go when she stepped back.

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow."

He watched her clear the gate, then turned into a yard that suddenly contained more chairs than people.

Tyler stood in the middle of it with two cups. Hannah was beside him holding the cards. Both looked at Ethan as if he'd been the one who'd arranged for everybody to leave at once.

"What?" he asked.

"We have to put these away," Hannah said.

"Okay."

"Nobody else is here to do it."

He laughed and took one cup from Tyler. "That's terrible."

"Very."

They began without much organization. Hannah took the cards inside. Tyler moved the chairs nearest the path. Ethan gathered the things left on the table and brought them to Rose, who was allowing Maddie to wash while she dried.

"Leave the rest," she told him.

"There isn't much."

"I know. Leave it."

He did. Kit came through the door with another chair, saw the clear space, and decided that was enough for tonight. The yard could look a little untidy until morning. Ethan felt an unreasonable gratitude toward the unstacked chairs for giving the day permission to stop.

He went back out to find Tyler sitting again, elbows on his knees, and Hannah perched on the next chair with one foot tucked beneath her. The last light held above the fence. Below it everything had gone soft at the edges.

Ethan sat on Hannah's other side.

For a little while none of them spoke. The kitchen sounds moved through the open door: water running, Maddie asking where something belonged, Rose answering, Kit opening a cupboard. A house getting ready for a quiet night while the people inside it were still too awake to go to bed.

Hannah leaned sideways until her shoulder touched Ethan's. He let it stay there. Tyler stretched one leg into the space in front of them, then the other, and sighed so dramatically that both siblings turned.

"What?" Ethan asked.

"Nothing. Tired."

"You've mentioned it," Hannah said.

"Because it's still happening."

She laughed, the sound small in the cooling yard. Ethan smiled and looked up. There wasn't much sky visible from this angle, just enough to see that the pale part had thinned.

"Good day," Tyler said after a while.

"Yeah," Ethan answered.

Hannah nodded against his shoulder. He looked down at her, then at his brother, both familiar enough that he didn't need to ask whether they meant it.

Inside, Rose called for someone to bring the last water bottle. Tyler pointed at Ethan. Hannah pointed at Tyler. Ethan picked it up himself, waited just long enough to make them think he'd accepted the job, and put it into his brother's hand.

Tyler laughed. Hannah leaned away before either could accuse her of helping. Ethan got up with them, warm where she'd been against him and pleasantly stiff when he stood.

They went inside before anybody had to call again.

Ethan woke on Monday because the house had gone quiet.

Not silent. There was water moving through a pipe, a cupboard closing, a low stretch of conversation he couldn't make into words. But no music from the street, no chairs being dragged through the yard, no one outside preparing an event he'd need to join as soon as he'd found his shoes.

He lay still and let the difference reach him. The room was warm at the edge of the bed where the light fell. His phone was facedown within reach; he turned it over, checked the time, and put it back. Late enough to get up. Not late enough that anybody would come looking unless he gave them another hour.

The blue sweatshirt he'd meant to put with his bag was folded nearby. He'd remembered it last night. That felt like a small achievement. Ethan looked at it, smiled without much energy, and pulled the sheet up far enough to stop the cool patch of air reaching his shoulder.

He wasn't going back to sleep. He spent several minutes proving it before sitting up.

Downstairs smelled of coffee. His legs felt nearly ordinary on the way, a faint pull in his calves remaining from the weekend rather than anything that required discussing. He found Rose in the kitchen with Maddie, both holding mugs and doing very little. The sight made him stop in the doorway.

"Morning," he said.

Rose looked at the clock. "Morning."

"It's still morning."

"I didn't say it wasn't."

Maddie smiled into her cup. Ethan went to find his own and discovered the cupboard already open, a clean mug waiting on the counter because somebody had expected him eventually.

"Coffee's there," Rose said. "Eat something too."

"I will."

He poured carefully, added what he wanted, and leaned against the counter while deciding how much effort breakfast deserved. There was bread. There were leftovers. There were enough containers in the fridge that opening it made him feel he'd been assigned an organizational task rather than offered food.

He chose toast.

"Tyler up?" he asked.

"Somewhere," Rose said.

"Hannah?"

"With him."

He nodded, took the bread out, and waited for the toaster to become interesting. Maddie asked whether he'd slept. He said yes, then asked her the same question, because she'd stayed up talking after he'd finally gone to bed.

"Very well," she said.

"Good."

Rose sat with them instead of finding another thing to wash. Ethan noticed the chair beside the table still had a cloth folded over its back, but she didn't reach for it when a crumb landed near her wrist. She brushed the crumb onto a plate and asked Maddie whether she wanted more coffee.

The toast emerged warmer than Ethan expected. He caught one slice by the edge, shook his fingers, and accepted the plate Rose pushed toward him without comment. He could hear television from the next room now, low enough that the words remained a murmur. Tyler laughed at something. Hannah answered him, louder than the program.

Ethan sat with his breakfast and let his shoulders drop.

"What are we doing?" he asked.

"Today?" Maddie said.

"Yeah."

"Nothing, if I can help it."

He smiled. Rose pointed at the fridge with her mug.

"Eating some of that."

"I can do that."

"We know."

He ate, accepting the tease because it wasn't a demand to make the day useful. Rose had a few things to put away. Kit had gone to return something to a neighbor and would be back. Maddie wanted to speak to Chimney when the children were ready. None of it added up to a schedule Ethan needed to keep in his head.

He could finish his toast before deciding where to sit next. The chair beneath him rocked slightly when he put his weight on the wrong foot. He remembered that too, adjusted without looking, and listened while Rose asked Maddie which photograph Jee had been trying to show them yesterday. Maddie found it on her phone and passed it over. Ethan watched Rose look closely, ask a question, smile at the answer. His breakfast cooled while he listened. He ate it anyway, no longer trying to decide whether the quiet needed filling with something more purposeful.

Hannah appeared halfway through the second slice. Her hair was still a little untidy on one side, and she had a cushion clutched against her stomach for no reason Ethan could work out.

"Hi."

"Hi." He looked at the cushion.

"Tyler was taking it."

"Right."

"He has two already."

"That seems excessive."

She smiled at the dryness in his voice and leaned against the doorframe. Maddie asked whether she wanted toast. Hannah said she'd eaten, then looked at the remaining bread as if reconsidering whether that settled anything.

Ethan put another slice in. Hannah accepted the plate when it was done and sat beside him, leaving the cushion on the chair behind her. Rose asked what they were watching. Hannah named the film, then said they weren't really watching it.

"Good film?" Maddie asked.

"Tyler picked it."

"That wasn't the question," Ethan said.

Hannah laughed and admitted it was fine. She'd seen part of it before. Tyler kept talking over the parts she hadn't seen, which was the main reason she was in the kitchen.

"Tell him to stop," Rose said.

"I did."

"And?"

"He stopped. Then he thought of something else."

Ethan smiled, finished his coffee, and got up with the plates. Rose let him put them by the sink instead of insisting he remain a guest. Hannah took the cushion under one arm and led him toward the television.

Tyler was sprawled in a position that made the couch look much smaller than it was. He lifted his feet when Ethan approached, lowered them onto the cushion Hannah had just reclaimed, and received an immediate objection.

"No."

"They're clean."

"No."

Ethan took the free space before the argument could spread into it. Tyler moved far enough to let him sit, then put one foot against the side of Ethan's calf instead. Ethan looked at it. Tyler watched the screen as if they hadn't interacted.

Fine. He left it there.

Hannah sat at the other end with her cushion securely beneath her arm. The film moved through a scene Ethan remembered vaguely, enough that he didn't need to ask how they'd got there. Sun lay across a patch of floor and stopped just short of the couch. Somebody had put a glass on the wrong coaster; the wet ring beside it was already beginning to fade.

He watched for a while without checking his phone. When Tyler commented, Hannah told him to wait. When Ethan asked a question, she made the same impatient sound and then answered it anyway. None of them was giving the film the attention it deserved.

Kit came in carrying the thing he'd gone to fetch, saw the three of them arranged across the couch, and shook his head with a smile.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes," Tyler said immediately.

Ethan nodded. Hannah lifted the cushion as evidence.

"Good." Kit put down what he was carrying. "Don't let that spill."

Ethan moved the glass to the middle of the coaster. His father went to the kitchen, greeted Maddie, and asked whether there was coffee left. Rose said there was if he wanted to make it hot again himself.

The film continued. Ethan felt the quiet turn from something he'd noticed on waking into something he was actually inside. No need to find the whole group, no bags of food to carry into the woods, no score to remember. Tyler's foot remained warm against his leg. Hannah laughed at something on the screen, stopped when neither brother joined her, and laughed harder because she was alone in it.

Ethan began laughing too. He'd missed the joke completely. That didn't matter much.

Maddie called from the kitchen a little later, asking whether he wanted to say hello. Ethan leaned forward, heard Chimney's voice through the phone, and got up. Hannah followed with her cushion abandoned on the couch.

The phone was propped where Maddie could see it without holding it over a hot drink. On the screen Chimney sat with Nash against him, one hand supporting the baby while he turned toward something Jee was doing just out of view.

"There's Ethan."

Ethan smiled. "Hey."

Jee came into the frame so close he saw her forehead first. Chimney adjusted the angle. She was trying to show Maddie something made of paper, holding it by one edge so it kept bending before anybody could see the whole thing.

"Turn it around," Maddie said gently. "Other way."

"Like this?"

"That way. There."

Ethan leaned closer. He could make out color, a shape Jee clearly expected them to recognize, the marks she'd added so carefully that he didn't want to guess wrong. He asked her to tell him about it. She did, with enough detail that Chimney smiled and shifted Nash higher without interrupting.

Hannah stood beside Ethan, looking at the small screen. Maddie moved the phone so she could fit too and told Jee who was there. Jee recognized the name before the introduction had finished, asked whether Hannah was still playing outside, and received a serious account of the fact that today they were mostly doing nothing.

"Why?" Jee asked.

"Because we did everything already," Hannah said.

Chimney laughed. "Sounds nice."

Ethan agreed. Nash moved one hand against Chimney's shirt, uninterested in the conversation but entirely absorbing when the screen tilted enough for Ethan to see his face. Maddie's expression changed as she looked at him, soft enough that Ethan glanced away for a moment and gave her the part of the call she'd wanted most.

Rose came over to say hello. Kit appeared behind her, careful not to make the whole image a ceiling and several chins. Chimney greeted them, thanked them for having Maddie, and listened while Rose told him she was keeping her because she was useful in the kitchen.

"I knew this would happen."

Maddie laughed. "You're doing fine."

"We are. Come back anyway."

"I will."

It wasn't a farewell yet, just the domestic version of missing somebody while there were still things to do. Ethan could hear Jee asking for her paper back. Chimney handed it over, adjusted Nash again, and asked Maddie a question Ethan didn't need to stay for.

He touched her shoulder on the way past, said he'd let them talk, and returned to the couch with Hannah. Tyler had taken the cushion again. This time she didn't argue. She sat beside him, pulled it out from under his elbow, and settled before he could decide whether to object.

"Everything okay?" he asked Ethan.

"Yeah."

"Good."

He moved his feet. Ethan sat, stretched his legs into the space he'd been given, and discovered he'd lost enough of the film that the room on the screen now looked unfamiliar. Hannah supplied two sentences of explanation. Tyler supplied six. Ethan thanked Hannah and ignored the rest until his brother nudged his ankle.

The film ended without becoming the event of the morning. There were credits, a discussion about whether the ending had made sense, and the discovery that all three of them had misunderstood a different part. Tyler reached for the remote. Hannah told him not to choose another one yet.

She put the remote down and pulled the puzzle box she'd left beneath the table into view. Ethan hadn't noticed it there. The lid showed enough sky to make him immediately distrust the amount of blue left inside.

"Are we doing that?" he asked.

"I started it."

"Here?"

"In the other room. I brought some of it in."

Tyler looked at the box, then at her. "Some of a puzzle."

"The pieces I was looking for."

She opened it to show them. A small selection, mostly edges, with one completed strip she lifted carefully so it wouldn't bend apart. Ethan leaned forward. He could see why she'd stopped: the same color continuing across several pieces, no obvious shape to tell her which one belonged next.

"Can I?" he asked.

She passed him the loose pieces, keeping the strip supported on the lid. He spread them near his knees, picked up the one that seemed most likely, and discovered it didn't fit in the place he'd been certain it would. Tyler watched without offering advice until Ethan tried it the other way around.

"Still won't," he said.

"I can see that."

Hannah smiled and took the piece back. She didn't make it fit either. That was reassuring enough that Ethan moved closer to the table and began looking properly, comparing the faint changes in color rather than only the shapes.

Maddie came in after finishing her drink and asked what they were doing. Hannah explained, then immediately asked whether she could see a difference between two pieces Ethan had decided were identical. Maddie took them, held them near the window, and pointed out a thin darker line he'd missed.

"Oh," Ethan said.

Hannah turned the strip, tried the second piece, and got the quiet click of the edges settling where they belonged. She looked up at all three of them with delighted disbelief.

"There."

"Very good," Maddie said.

"Only a thousand more," Tyler added.

"Not a thousand."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Fewer."

He laughed and reached for another piece. They stayed around the table in awkward positions, none of them having decided to sit properly because they were only going to do one more. Ethan found two that joined each other but not the strip. Tyler claimed that counted. Hannah said it did, took them carefully, and put them where they wouldn't be mixed up again.

The puzzle wasn't new. The corners of the box had softened. Ethan recognized part of the picture when Hannah turned the lid toward him, though he couldn't remember whether he'd ever helped finish it. That was probably why she had patience for the pieces he kept offering in the wrong place. She already knew what it would become.

"You could start somewhere else," he suggested.

"I did. That's what's in the other room."

"Right."

She showed him a photograph she'd taken of the rest. There was far more done than he'd imagined. A whole section he'd assumed remained in the box was already laid out, the difficult sky becoming a problem she'd chosen because the easier things had stopped needing her.

Ethan looked at the pieces in his hands with more respect. He'd arrived in the middle and tried to tell her where to begin.

"Which bit do you want?" he asked.

"That edge."

He looked for it. Tyler searched beside him, passing over the ones he'd ruled out. Maddie stayed long enough to find another pair, then went to answer Rose in the kitchen. The room kept its slow pace around the little work they were doing.

At last Hannah found the missing corner herself. She fitted it with both hands, pressed lightly along the seam, and sat back. Ethan watched her shoulders lower.

"Good?" he asked.

"Yeah." She smiled. "Thanks."

"You did it."

"You found the other ones."

He nodded, accepting the share she offered. Tyler put the loose pieces back in the box without dismantling what they'd made. Hannah carried the lid carefully away to join it to the larger puzzle, then returned with empty hands and looked toward the kitchen.

"I'm hungry."

"You just ate."

"That was ages ago."

Ethan looked at the time and discovered she wasn't entirely wrong. The morning had turned toward midday while he'd been sitting still, and nobody had come in to tell him he was wasting it.

He went with her to the kitchen. Tyler followed after a minute, pretending he'd come for a drink rather than the food Rose was beginning to take from the fridge. Maddie was off the call now, her phone facedown near her mug. She looked content and slightly tired, the way she'd looked after Sunday when the guests had gone.

"How are they?" Ethan asked.

"Good." She smiled. "Very ready to show us everything when we get back."

"Good."

He took out plates. Hannah chose what she wanted first; Tyler tried to borrow her fork before she'd used it and received an indignant look. Kit came in, opened the bread, and asked who wanted some before taking it all outside to put away the last things from yesterday.

Ethan offered to help. His father nodded toward the plate in his hand.

"Eat first. There's hardly anything left."

He listened. Sat. Let the food be warm enough or cold enough without making it a project. Rose asked Tyler to pass the bowl. Maddie told Hannah the paper Jee had been showing them would probably need its own suitcase if she kept adding to it. Hannah asked whether she could have a picture when it was finished.

"I'll ask her," Maddie said.

Ethan watched the exchange over his plate, then looked down before anybody could ask what he was smiling about. A request for a photograph. A child in California with a whole explanation ready. Hannah in New Haven wanting to hear it. Small things continued while he wasn't standing between them.

His phone buzzed beside his elbow. Sophie wanted to know whether he was awake.

He typed with one thumb, then set the phone down long enough to take another bite.

Ethan: Yeah. At home.

The answer arrived while Tyler was trying to decide whether the last piece of bread belonged to anybody.

Sophie: Might come by in a bit.

Ethan: Come over.

He put the phone away. Nothing had been arranged beyond that. He could finish eating, carry his plate to the sink, find shoes if they decided they wanted to go anywhere. For now Hannah was asking him to pass the potatoes and Rose was telling Tyler to stop using the serving spoon as his own.

Ethan passed the bowl and stayed at the table.

Sophie arrived before Ethan had found his shoes.

He'd put them somewhere sensible the night before, then moved them because Tyler needed to get past, and had apparently expected his feet to remember the second location without involving his head. Sophie stood in the doorway watching him look beneath a chair.

"Going somewhere?" she asked.

"Apparently."

She smiled. He found the shoes beside the other chair, sat to put them on, and asked whether she wanted to go anywhere in particular. She shook her head.

"Outside. A little walk."

"Yeah."

"Tyler coming?"

"He's in there."

She went to ask him. Ethan tied one lace, discovered the other had knotted itself, and heard Tyler agree with the immediate enthusiasm of someone who'd spent half the morning insisting he was comfortable where he was.

Hannah didn't want to come. She'd found something she meant to finish and was sitting with Maddie at the table, both looking at the same phone. Ethan told Rose they wouldn't be long, accepted the reminder to take water, and went out with Sophie while Tyler looked for his own shoes.

The street was just a street again.

Ethan stopped at the gate long enough to notice. No canopy, no chairs, no tables claiming the road. A car moved slowly past, ordinary enough that he stepped back without thinking. The chalk near the curb had faded at the edges. One blue square remained brighter than the others, its number still crooked.

Sophie followed his glance. "Yours."

"The number, not the square."

"I know."

Tyler joined them, carrying a bottle by the neck, and asked which way. Sophie pointed. They went without debating the route, three sets of steps finding a pace they'd used before Ethan could remember deciding to walk beside them.

He took the outside edge at first. Then Tyler stopped to let somebody pass, Sophie moved around a crack in the pavement, and Ethan found himself in the middle. There was no need to restore the original arrangement. Their shoulders nearly touched when the path narrowed, separated again when it widened.

The air smelled warm and faintly dusty. After the enclosed quiet of the house, even the distant sound of traffic seemed bright. Ethan looked at a hedge he'd once known as a place to hide, a gate he'd been told not to climb, a patch of wall with the old mark still visible beneath newer paint.

"Don't," Sophie said.

He looked at her.

"You were looking at it like you wanted to go over."

"I wasn't."

Tyler laughed. "He was thinking about it."

"I was remembering."

"Same face," Sophie said.

Ethan smiled and kept walking. Remembering didn't mean the wall remained a sensible route. He could go around now and still know where he'd once put his foot.

They passed Mrs. Alvarez, who was bringing something out to the bin. She waved with her free hand and asked whether they'd recovered. Tyler said barely. Sophie said yes. Ethan said thank you again for the food, which made her smile and tell him there was still time to come back for more.

They didn't stop long. She had things to do, and for once none of them was carrying a dish she'd need to identify. Ethan waved as they moved on. The encounter took less than a minute and left him feeling he'd been expected without being waited for.

Sophie asked whether he remembered the time they'd tried to get home before the rain and made it only as far as that corner. Ethan did. Tyler didn't remember the rain until she mentioned the bag he'd insisted would keep everything dry.

"It did," he said.

"The inside of the bag," Sophie answered.

"That's what a bag does."

Ethan laughed. He remembered the water running down his neck, Sophie's hair stuck against her cheek, all three of them trying to fit beneath a place clearly too small to shelter even one properly. He'd been irritated about the wet socks. Now the memory arrived with the ridiculousness first.

"Your mom gave us towels," Sophie said.

"Then made us take our shoes off outside."

"They were awful."

"They were shoes," Tyler said.

"They were full of water."

He conceded that with a smile and took a drink. Ethan held the bottle when Tyler offered it, drank, and gave it back. The ordinary passing of it made him think of Friday in the woods and Saturday beside the cooler, the ways their hands kept remembering who would take what without a formal question.

Sophie looked down at her phone when it vibrated. She answered the message with both thumbs, then put it away and told them Lucia was nearby.

"Want to find her?" Ethan asked.

"She said she'd come this way."

They slowed at the next clear patch of pavement, staying out of the route while somebody passed with a stroller. Tyler leaned against the wall. Ethan stood in the shade beside him, watching the light move through the leaves overhead.

Lucia appeared a few minutes later with a bag over one shoulder. She looked from their faces to the wall and smiled.

"Lost?"

"Waiting for you," Sophie said.

"Worse."

Ethan laughed and stepped forward to hug her. Lucia let the bag slide down her arm so it wouldn't catch between them, squeezed him once, and moved beside Sophie as they started walking again.

She'd been doing an errand. Nothing interesting enough to explain at length, she said, then immediately explained the part that had annoyed her because Sophie asked. Ethan listened to the difficulty of being told something was ready when it wasn't, the second trip she'd hoped not to make, the person who'd finally found the thing in the place she'd already suggested.

"Did you get it?" Tyler asked.

Lucia lifted the bag.

"Good."

"Eventually."

She sounded annoyed for another few seconds, then asked Ethan whether he'd eaten any of the food she'd seen being put away last night. He said yes. She named the thing she wanted if there was any left, and he promised to look before Tyler got there.

Tyler objected. Nobody paid him enough attention to keep the objection alive.

At the next corner Sophie asked if they wanted to keep going or turn back. Ethan looked at the road ahead, then at the others. They didn't have a destination waiting to justify the distance.

"A little farther?" he said.

"Okay."

They went on. Not toward another Manhunt hiding place on purpose, though Ethan recognized enough of the route to know where he'd turn if they were playing. His body kept offering shortcuts. The afternoon kept declining the need for them.

Lucia asked Sophie about the thing she'd finally finished yesterday. Sophie answered with a sigh that was more relief than complaint. Ethan let them talk. Tyler fell into step beside him, the bottle swinging loosely from one hand.

"You good?" his brother asked.

"Yeah."

"Good."

They walked several steps without adding anything. Ethan watched a leaf scrape along the pavement, catch against a rough patch, and settle. He could feel the sun at the back of his neck where yesterday's warmth had faded to a mild tenderness.

"Feels weird," he said after a while.

"What?"

"Leaving again tomorrow."

Tyler nodded without making the afternoon solemn. "Yeah."

"I just got used to being here."

"You remember how."

Ethan looked at him. Tyler shrugged, a small movement that didn't pretend to answer the whole thing.

"Mostly," Ethan said.

His brother smiled. "You found your shoes eventually."

Ethan laughed, relieved by the deliberate smallness of it, and nudged Tyler's arm. Tyler nudged back harder. Ahead, Sophie turned to see what they'd done, recognized the shape of it, and kept walking with Lucia.

A ball rolled out ahead of them and stopped against Sophie's shoe. She caught it before it reached the road, looked toward the fence, and found a boy already coming to retrieve it. He stopped when he saw her holding it.

"Yours?" she asked.

He nodded. She gave it back, then moved aside while his friend came through the gap after him, laughing at the kick that had sent it out in the first place. Ethan stepped closer to Tyler to give them room.

The second boy recognized Tyler. He greeted him with a quick, pleased surprise, asked whether he was staying, and received the ordinary answer that he'd be around. Ethan listened, trying to place the face and finding only a much younger version that didn't match the voice.

When the boys went back, he asked who it was. Tyler supplied the name. Sophie remembered immediately. Lucia remembered the sister. Ethan remembered the little boy who used to trail after them until somebody told him he couldn't come as far as the woods.

"He's big," Ethan said.

Tyler laughed. "He kept growing."

"I noticed."

The boy looked back toward them, lifted the ball once in acknowledgment, and returned to his game. Ethan waved. He could remember being irritated by the following footsteps years ago, convinced that being old enough to go farther meant he should never have to wait. Now the boy hardly needed them to notice him at all.

Sophie looked at Ethan's face and smiled. "You used to give him the long way around."

"He always got there."

"Because Tyler told him."

Ethan turned. His brother grinned without apology. Lucia began laughing before Ethan could decide whether he still had grounds to complain.

He didn't. He nudged Tyler's shoulder instead, and the four of them continued at the same unhurried pace.

They stopped where the shade was broad enough for all four of them. Sophie sat on the low edge of a wall. Lucia stayed standing, one hand through the strap of her bag, while Tyler inspected the cap of his bottle as if it had personally inconvenienced him.

Ethan sat beside Sophie. The stone held a little warmth through his trousers. He stretched his legs, crossed one ankle over the other, and felt her shoulder settle near his without quite leaning.

"I like this," she said.

"Walking?"

"Not having to be somewhere."

He nodded. He knew. There'd been years when they could fill an afternoon by deciding which way to turn, then another stretch when every visit came with a clock attached. He didn't want to spend the free hour comparing them. He looked at the shape of her shoe against the pavement instead, the scuff she'd acquired yesterday and hadn't noticed yet.

Lucia shifted the bag to her other shoulder. Ethan offered to take it. She let him, handed it over, and flexed her fingers.

"Thanks."

"What is this?"

"Things."

"Heavy things."

"That's why I gave it to you."

He laughed and put it beside his feet, within her reach. Nothing fragile, she assured him when he set it down too carefully. He could stop treating it like an injured animal.

Tyler sat on Ethan's other side, turning the little pause into something they were doing together rather than waiting for Sophie to finish. Lucia leaned against the wall. They watched the street for a while, talking when something occurred to them and letting the gaps remain when it didn't.

Sophie asked whether he still listened to the song they'd argued about on Saturday. Ethan said sometimes. Tyler insisted it remained his discovery. Sophie rolled her eyes, took out her phone, and found the old message far enough back that the search itself became entertaining.

"Don't go too far," Ethan warned.

"Why?"

"Because I'm in there."

She smiled. "I know."

She found the link, the date, the brief exchange beneath it. No one played the song aloud. Sophie turned the screen toward Tyler, let him read the evidence, and accepted his reluctant admission with enough satisfaction to last the rest of the walk.

Ethan glanced at the earlier messages while the screen was near him. Homework. A question about a time. A complaint he couldn't remember making. The things they'd said because there'd been no reason to preserve them carefully. He looked away before she moved farther back.

"Send it again," he said.

"The proof?"

"The song."

She did. He felt his phone vibrate and smiled without taking it out. Later, on the plane perhaps, he'd listen with headphones and remember this particular warm wall, Lucia's bag beside his shoe, Tyler conceding defeat like it cost him something.

Sophie put the phone away and drew one knee closer to the wall. Tyler asked if she was cold, received a look at the warm pavement, and admitted it had been a stupid question. Lucia laughed, but reached down to straighten the strap Ethan had nearly trapped beneath his shoe. He moved his foot, thanked her, and left his hand resting loosely on the bag. They could sit without making every silence a signal that somebody wanted to leave. Ethan let his breath out and looked toward the turn they would take home when they were ready.

The thought didn't make him sad exactly. It made the afternoon feel worth noticing. Ethan took a drink when Tyler offered the bottle again and asked Lucia what she'd meant about the dish she wanted to make.

She explained it properly this time. Not a recipe delivered for his education, just the thing she'd been thinking about when she saw an ingredient somewhere and wanted to try it. Sophie asked a question. Tyler offered to taste it. Lucia told him she'd assumed that part.

"Let me know," Ethan said.

"When?"

"When you make it."

"Oh. Yeah." She smiled. "I'll send you a picture if it's good."

"If it's bad too."

"Why?"

"So I know I'm not the only person doing that."

She laughed, looked at him a moment, and agreed. Ethan liked the promise because it didn't require a flight or an empty weekend. She could make something on an ordinary evening and decide he was someone who should see it.

Lucia took her phone out to show Sophie the ingredient she'd been talking about, and found a photograph from Friday instead. She paused, smiled, and turned it toward Ethan. Not the posed group picture. Someone had caught them while they were sorting the bags, Ethan looking down, Hannah trying to hand him three things at once, Ryan behind them with his mouth open around a sentence nobody could remember.

"That's probably a complaint," Tyler said.

"Definitely," Sophie answered.

Ethan leaned closer. He could see the dark edge of the trees, the light caught in the plastic bottle near his hand, the small familiar mess of them making themselves comfortable. Nothing in the picture explained what they'd talked about. He liked it for that too.

"Who took it?" he asked.

"Emily sent it."

He nodded. Lucia moved to the next one, then stopped before it became a slideshow nobody had chosen. Sophie asked her to send the first. Ethan asked for it too. Tyler said he was already in enough embarrassing pictures that one more wouldn't make a difference.

"You look fine," Lucia told him.

"I know. That's suspicious."

She laughed and put the phone away. Ethan looked down at his own hands, cleaner now than they'd been in the photograph. A faint pale line remained near one nail where Friday's dirt had taken more washing than he'd expected. The game had lasted a few hours. His body had kept small pieces of it all weekend.

"You going to play when you're back?" Tyler asked.

"Next time I'm here?"

"Yeah."

"Obviously."

"Good."

Sophie smiled. Lucia said she'd ask for the night off sooner, and Ethan told her she hadn't missed anything important by arriving when she did. She looked at him, pleased, then said she meant she'd like not to run there carrying a bag after finishing work.

"Fair," he said.

She could want the whole evening, not only the moment they made room for her. Ethan nodded at the correction and took another drink. Next time, if they managed it, they'd begin with whoever was there and keep a place for the person on the way. That part they already knew how to do.

Sophie stood first. They'd rested long enough for the wall to become less comfortable. Ethan picked up Lucia's bag, offered it back, and kept it when she said he could carry it until the next corner. Tyler got up with a slow stretch that made Sophie ask whether he'd somehow got older since they'd left the house.

"Much," he said.

They headed back. The same route looked different in reverse, familiar turns arriving in an order Ethan's feet knew before his eyes did. Sophie walked beside him now, Lucia and Tyler just behind. He could hear them discussing whether there was any bread left at home and whose fault it would be if there wasn't.

"I'm glad you came," Sophie said quietly.

"Today?"

"This weekend."

He nodded. "Me too."

"I know we've said it."

"That's okay."

She smiled and put her arm through his for a few steps. Ethan adjusted his hand around the bag so the weight didn't pull them apart. No great confession followed. She asked whether he'd packed, he said not properly, and she told him to do it before midnight because he always forgot something when he was tired.

"You sound like Mom."

"She's right."

He laughed. Behind them Tyler asked what Rose was right about and received two incompatible answers. Lucia told him to stop asking questions he didn't want explained. He laughed too, and the four of them went around the last corner together.

The house was where they'd left it. The chalk remained near the curb, paler now beneath the afternoon sun. Ethan put Lucia's bag down just inside the gate and flexed his fingers. Sophie thanked him for the walk as if he hadn't simply followed her out of his own front door.

"Come in," he said.

She did. Tyler called to the house to announce that they'd returned without acquiring any more food. Rose's answer came back asking whether that was a complaint. Lucia began laughing before he could decide.

Ethan held the door for them, then went in after his friends.

It began with Hannah asking when everybody would see Ethan again.

Ethan was sitting in the yard again, though nobody had meant to gather everybody there. Sophie had stayed. Lucia had put her bag down and accepted the food he'd found for her. Emily came over after a message from Hannah, Katie and Connor followed not long afterward, and Ryan announced his arrival by asking whether anyone had left him anything to eat.

There was plenty. Rose pointed him toward it and went back inside with the firm expression of someone who was not hosting another event simply because the chairs were occupied.

Ethan had helped carry out the water. Now he held a glass between his knees, listening while Natalie and Noah arrived in the middle of a disagreement neither appeared particularly upset about. Marcus came through the gate behind them, greeted Kit, and took the space Ryan had saved with a foot.

The whole group, more or less by accident. Ethan had been enjoying the sight of it when Hannah turned toward him with the question.

"You're going back tomorrow," she said.

"That's usually how Tuesdays work."

"I know that." She rolled her eyes. "When are we all going to do this again?"

"I don't know."

"Christmas?" Ryan suggested.

"You volunteering to organize everybody's holidays?" Katie asked.

"Absolutely not."

Tyler laughed. Sophie glanced around the circle, doing the same impossible arithmetic Ethan knew Hannah was doing: work, classes, money, and a dozen lives that no longer ran on the same school bell.

"We could at least try to find a weekend," Sophie said.

"Here?" Connor asked.

"Or somewhere else."

For a moment the subject might have ended there. Then Connor asked whether anyone had considered visiting Ethan instead.

Sophie looked at Tyler. Ethan saw the glance and immediately distrusted it.

"What?" he asked.

"We could come," she said.

He laughed before realizing she hadn't made a joke. She was still looking at Tyler, who'd gone quiet in the way he did when something had moved from entertaining to possible.

"To LA?" Ethan asked.

"No, the moon," Ryan said. "You can call."

Katie flicked his arm. Ethan smiled, but his attention stayed on Sophie.

"You mean it?"

"Yeah. If we can."

The qualification didn't make it smaller. It made the idea something she was willing to put against an actual calendar rather than say because the afternoon felt good. Ethan looked around at the others.

"I'd go," Lucia said.

"Me too," Emily answered.

Noah had already taken out his phone. Natalie leaned toward him, not to borrow the screen but to see which dates he was looking at. Marcus looked at Ryan. Katie asked whether they meant sometime this fall, and Connor said it would make more sense to choose a weekend than to fly out for a single day.

Hannah sat forward.

"I'm coming."

Tyler opened his mouth. She pointed at him before he could speak.

"Not just you."

"I didn't say anything."

"You looked like you were going to."

Ethan laughed, then stopped when she turned the same serious expression toward him. He knew what she meant. She'd heard the talk of travel and older friends making plans, the picture of a reunion she might not be part of. He could answer the actual concern without promising the flight.

"You're included," he said.

Her shoulders eased a fraction. "Good."

"Mom and Dad still have to say yes."

"I know."

"And school."

"I know that too."

He nodded. She stayed forward in her chair, not a spectator waiting to be told whether the rest of them had solved it. Ethan liked that, even while the practical part of his mind began finding every reason the idea would take work.

"Flights," Natalie said, making the first one audible.

"Money," Marcus added.

"Work," Lucia said.

"Classes," Noah said, looking at the screen.

Ryan leaned back. "Excellent. Easy."

They laughed, but nobody dropped the subject. Katie asked how far the airport was from Ethan's place. He answered approximately, explaining that the time could change enough with traffic that he wouldn't plan a tight connection around the best version. Connor asked whether they'd all have to take the same flight.

"No," Ethan said. "Would be easier in some ways. Not necessarily cheaper."

He heard himself beginning to organize eleven people's arrival and stopped to drink before he could volunteer to compare every route. Sophie noticed. She bumped his shoe lightly.

"We can look," she said.

"I know."

"Not just you."

He looked at her, then nodded. "Okay."

Emily asked how many people the loft could hold. Ethan smiled helplessly at the circle.

"Not all of you."

"We know," Tyler said.

"I'm saying it now."

"Good."

There were chairs here, grass, a kitchen full of leftovers, parents who'd been feeding half of them since childhood. Los Angeles wasn't the same arrangement transported west. Ethan could want them in his home without pretending there were eleven spare beds behind the door.

"We'd have to work out somewhere to stay," he said. "Some of you, anyway. I need to check what actually fits."

"A room between a few of us?" Katie suggested.

"Maybe," Natalie said. "Depends what it costs."

"And getting around," Connor added.

He didn't say it like a reason not to go. More like the next piece of the picture he'd need before deciding whether the money was possible. Ethan felt his excitement become less sharp and more substantial. They were asking how it might work.

Hannah looked toward the house. Kit was visible through the doorway, reading something Rose had handed him. She turned back toward Ethan.

"I'll ask."

"Not like we've already booked it."

"I wasn't going to."

Tyler smiled at the certainty of that denial. Hannah saw, made an impatient sound, and stayed where she was. Ethan was glad. If she ran inside now, the others would keep talking around the space she'd left, and she deserved to hear the decisions before trying to explain them.

They looked at a few possible fall weekends first. Not an agreement, a place to begin. Noah checked something against his calendar and said he needed to look at the proper schedule when he got home. Natalie had the same problem for a different reason. Lucia couldn't promise a particular shift would be free just because she wanted it to be.

"Could swap?" Emily asked.

"Maybe. I'd have to ask."

"I can ask early," Marcus said.

Ryan nodded. Tyler rubbed one hand along the back of his neck, thinking through a version of the week Ethan couldn't see. Nobody demanded an immediate answer from him. It would be strange to insist on honesty about the costs and then punish somebody for having one.

Sophie said she wanted to know even if she couldn't come. Ethan looked at her.

"Know what?"

"What everybody's finding. So it's not one person saying no to an imaginary cheap flight that doesn't exist."

Katie laughed in recognition. "Yes."

"And if it doesn't work for all of us," Natalie said, "that doesn't mean nobody goes."

The sentence landed with more weight than the earlier jokes. Ethan looked at Hannah, then Tyler, then the others. Some old part of him wanted to insist they should wait until everybody could do it. The same part had once been furious when a weekend couldn't hold all three of the original trio.

It wasn't a fair rule to impose on people who were trying.

"Yeah," he said. "I'd still want whoever can."

Sophie nodded, relieved enough that he knew she'd been waiting for that answer. Emily began asking which airport people would use. Ryan named the closest option; Natalie reminded him that closest wasn't always cheapest. Connor wanted to know whether a longer drive at this end could save enough to matter.

The questions multiplied. Ethan let them. He answered the ones that belonged to where he lived and listened while the others supplied things he didn't know about their schedules. The whole afternoon no longer depended on him being the bridge between every pair of people.

Hannah got a notebook from inside. When she came back, Tyler looked at it and laughed.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing. Very prepared."

"Somebody should write it down."

"Your phone does that."

"I want to write it."

Ethan held out a hand for the pen only when she started looking for somewhere to put the water glass. He kept it while she moved the glass to the table, then gave it back. She wrote two possible weekends, crossed one out when Noah reminded her about his schedule, and asked whether she should put everyone's names underneath.

"Put a question mark by mine," Sophie said.

Hannah did. Ethan could see her handwriting angled toward her knee. She wasn't making a contract. She wanted a thing she could look at later and know the idea had actually been said aloud.

He understood that more than he wanted to admit.

Rose came to the door to ask whether anybody wanted the rest of the bread. Hannah turned so quickly Ethan thought she'd decided not to wait after all. But she only said yes, please, then looked at him and smiled at the effort of behaving normally.

He smiled back.

"What are you lot doing?" Rose asked.

"Thinking about a trip," Tyler said.

"To LA," Hannah added.

Rose looked at Ethan, who spread one hand before the subject could outrun the truth.

"Just a visit, maybe sometime this fall. We're seeing if it could work."

"Oh." Her expression softened. "That would be lovely."

"And I want to come," Hannah said.

"I heard that part."

"Can I?"

"We'll talk about it when you know what you're asking."

Hannah took a breath. Ethan watched her decide whether to argue and then, to his surprise, hand over the notebook instead.

"That's what we have so far."

Rose read it. Dates, questions, a few names without promises beside them. She nodded, returned it, and told Hannah to show Kit as well before anybody started offering to spend money.

"That's not no?" Hannah asked.

"No," Rose said, smiling. "It's not no."

Hannah sat back with a quiet, triumphant look that made Tyler laugh again. Ethan could feel himself smiling too. Permission to investigate wasn't a booking, but it was farther than they'd been ten minutes ago.

Rose brought the bread. Kit came with her long enough to hear the short version, ask which weekend they were considering, and tell Hannah they would check school before deciding. She nodded so seriously that Ethan nearly laughed, then caught himself. She was trying to be taken seriously. He could help by doing it.

When the parents went back inside, Ryan looked around the circle.

"So we're trying."

"We're trying," Sophie said.

"Actually trying," Katie added, looking at Connor as if he'd be the first to forget which dates they'd discussed.

He smiled. "I have a calendar."

"Use it."

"I will."

Ethan sat still while they made the small promises that meant more than a dramatic one would've. Check a schedule. Ask about a shift. Look at flights without buying them. Find out whether a room split several ways might be affordable. Tell the others when the answer was no as well as when it was yes.

Ethan watched Marcus put a reminder into his phone rather than relying on remembering it after work. Emily checked the dates once more with Natalie. Lucia wrote something for herself, then looked up and joined the conversation before the others moved on. Small acts, easy to miss. He'd said he wanted people to visit before and heard warm answers that never reached a calendar. This felt different, not because anybody sounded certain, but because they were giving the idea places to survive after they left his yard. He kept his hands around the glass until he could trust his voice to stay ordinary.

Nobody reached across the table for a solemn hand pile. Tyler offered his fist toward Ethan anyway, a deliberately small gesture, and Ethan knocked his own against it. Hannah joined so quickly she nearly hit his wrist. Sophie laughed and put her hand against the back of Ethan's shoulder instead.

There. A pact, if that was what they wanted to call it. Not to arrive at any cost. To make an honest attempt to get there.

Ethan looked at them and found his throat unexpectedly tight. He drank before trying to speak, lowered the glass, and saw Sophie watching him with a smile that didn't ask him to perform being moved.

"I'd really like that," he said.

"We gathered," Marcus answered softly.

The warmth in his voice did more than teasing would have. Ethan smiled, looked down at the notebook, and asked Hannah to let him see the dates she'd written. She passed it over. He checked the tentative weekends, the question marks, the little space she'd left beside her own name.

He didn't write a yes. He drew a small line beneath the questions they needed answered, then gave it back.

Noah asked whether anybody had actually looked at a price yet. Several people turned their phones over. Ethan felt the impulse to lean toward the nearest screen, then stayed back while Emily and Natalie compared what they were finding.

"That's one way," Natalie said.

Emily stopped smiling. "Oh."

"Change the date."

"I did."

"The return date."

Emily looked again, made a quiet, annoyed sound, and fixed it. Ethan knew that particular disappointment, the brief bright possibility before the number stopped being what he'd thought it was. He waited while she looked at the new total.

"Still maybe," she said at last. "Not deciding it right now."

Lucia nodded. She wanted to know how much time off she'd need before she could decide what counted as affordable. Marcus said he'd rather pay a little more than arrive with no sleep and spend the whole visit trying to recover. Ryan began to object, considered the point, and admitted that was fair.

They weren't all solving the same problem. Ethan listened as the idea separated into eleven lives with different ways of getting there. Somebody could stay an extra night if it saved enough money. Somebody else couldn't miss the next morning. A cheap option with a long wait might be fine for one person and make the whole thing impossible for another.

"Send what you find," Sophie said again. "We can compare it later."

Nobody was appointed to do all the comparing. Hannah offered to keep the dates together, but Natalie told her she didn't need to turn it into homework. Hannah looked at the notebook, then at her, and said she liked writing things down.

"I know," Natalie said, smiling. "Just don't do everyone's work for them."

Ethan looked at his own hands. Sophie caught the glance and nudged his shoe again. He laughed softly and left his phone where it was.

Tyler asked what Ethan would actually want to do if they got there. Ethan considered the question with an unexpected rush of embarrassment. He'd been imagining airport pickups and bedding and whether everyone could afford a meal. He hadn't got as far as wanting something for himself.

"See you," he said.

Tyler rolled his eyes, affectionate rather than dismissive. "After that."

"I don't know. Food. Hang out. Show you some things."

"We can do that," Katie said.

"Not all of LA in two days."

"Good," Connor answered. "That sounds tiring."

Hannah asked whether she could see the loft. Ethan looked at her, surprised she thought she needed to ask.

"Of course."

"And where you go."

"What, the grocery store?"

"Maybe." She smiled at his laugh. "I don't know where anything is when you tell me about it."

He nodded, the small wish reaching him more clearly than a list of tourist places would've. She wanted to put a room around his voice. Know where he was standing when he called. He could show her that without arranging a spectacular reunion that had to go perfectly.

"Yeah," he said. "I'd like that."

Emily asked about somewhere they could get food without spending everything they had left. Ethan named the sort of options he'd actually use, then stopped before the afternoon became an imaginary menu. They would know more when they knew how many people, how long, which days.

For now the questions had done something useful. They hadn't talked themselves out of wanting the trip. They'd made room for the wanting to cost something real.

They stayed with the practicalities a little longer, until the information available from their chairs had run out. Noah put his phone away first. Natalie told him to send the thing he'd found before forgetting. Lucia made a note about work. Katie asked Connor whether he wanted to look at the different airport options together later, and he said yes without making that a commitment to anything else.

The afternoon widened again. Someone asked for the bread. Emily went inside to refill her water. Ryan wanted to know whether pizza counted as dinner if they were flying home afterward, and Tyler told him not to plan the menu before they'd found the money.

Ethan laughed. The future had become ordinary enough to argue about food in. He didn't need a perfect group photograph to mark the moment, though he thought he'd remember Hannah holding the notebook against her stomach, Sophie leaning back with one ankle crossed over the other, Marcus listening while Ryan tried to make the timing sound easier than it was.

Eventually they would go home and look at actual calendars. Some answers would be inconvenient. The invitation would have to survive the end of the afternoon to mean anything.

For now, when Hannah asked whether she should put everybody's name down, there was a chorus of yeses, corrections, and reminders that it only meant trying.

"That's what I'm writing," she told them.

Ethan looked over her shoulder. She'd written the possible dates neatly this time. Beneath it, crowded but legible, were all their names.

By evening the notebook had gone inside.

Hannah put it somewhere she could find it again, told Tyler not to move it, then came back to the kitchen to ask whether she could help with dinner. Ethan watched her take plates from Rose with the pleased seriousness she'd been trying to hide since the afternoon. Nobody teased her about it. Even Tyler only smiled and moved the cutlery out of her way.

The last friends had left in ordinary stages, carrying bottles, bags, reminders to send something when they'd looked at it properly. Sophie had touched Ethan's arm at the gate and told him to travel safely tomorrow. Lucia hugged him and asked for a message when he was back. Katie and Connor argued about whose route home was shorter; Noah and Natalie were still talking when they went around the corner. Marcus squeezed the back of his neck. Ryan told him not to let the birthday pass without them trying.

Now there were six people to feed, and enough food for more than that. Rose opened a container, looked inside, and handed it to Ethan.

"This can go out."

He took it to the table. Maddie was setting out water, her sleeves pushed back, a little crease between her eyebrows as she tried to make room for the bowl Kit had just put down. He moved a plate. She shifted the glass. The problem disappeared without anybody being assigned blame for making it.

Ethan found his chair and sat when Rose told him to. Tyler was already there, testing the bread with one finger. Hannah hit his hand lightly with the folded napkin before he could pull a piece away.

"Wait."

"For what?"

"Everybody."

"Everybody's here."

Kit sat. Rose followed. Maddie put down the last glass, looked at the available seats, and took the one beside Rose. Tyler glanced at Hannah as if this proved his argument. She ignored him, which Ethan considered a better result than continuing it.

They ate. The food tasted a little different from yesterday, colder where it was meant to be cold, softened by time where it wasn't. Ethan was hungry enough not to mind, rested enough to notice which thing he wanted more of. He passed Maddie the dish she'd been reaching for and took the bread when Tyler finally handed it over.

No one asked for an account of what the visit had meant. Kit wanted to know whether the flight information was still the same. Maddie said yes. They'd go to the airport around noon tomorrow, leaving enough room for the usual things without turning the morning into a race.

Ethan nodded. He'd checked the information. Checked it again because he knew he'd be asked. For once he could give the answer and leave it alone.

"Packed?" Rose asked.

"Mostly."

Tyler laughed. Ethan looked at him.

"What?"

"Nothing. Mostly."

"I have things in the bag."

"That counts," Maddie said, smiling.

Rose looked unconvinced but didn't make him get up to prove it. He'd finish after dinner, while everyone was still awake and able to tell him where he'd left the thing he couldn't find. His sweatshirt was with the bag. His shoes were where he'd put them after the walk. There was no reason packing had to become a midnight emergency just because he'd done that before.

Hannah asked whether he wanted the photograph she'd sent yesterday in the other size. Ethan said yes, though he wasn't certain which size he already had. She explained the difference, growing impatient only when Tyler offered an answer that had nothing to do with the question.

Maddie listened, asked Hannah to show her afterward, and accepted the immediate agreement. Ethan watched his sister go back to eating with the promise stored somewhere obvious in her face.

Kit asked Rose whether she'd heard back from Ellen. Rose nodded and told him the bowl had made it home. That led to a short discussion about a lid nobody recognized, which Ethan found sitting beneath the container beside his elbow. He held it up. Rose looked at it, shook her head, and told him that wasn't the one.

Tyler laughed again. This time Ethan joined him. He'd spent three days carrying things between places and apparently still couldn't identify a lid accurately enough to help his mother.

"Leave it," she said, smiling. "I'll ask."

He put it down. The conversation went on without requiring the mystery solved before anybody could enjoy dinner.

The windows held the last light. Ethan could see a pale strip of sky beyond the darker shape of the neighboring house. Yesterday they'd still been outside at this hour, chairs turned toward one another, people putting off the next movement. Tonight his family was already indoors, the table between them small enough that Hannah didn't have to raise her voice to join in.

She told Maddie about the part of the walk she'd been relieved not to come on because she'd finished the thing she wanted to do. Ethan listened to the account she'd barely offered him at midday. It mattered more when she explained it properly. He asked a question and received a much more detailed answer than he'd expected.

Tyler began to interrupt, stopped when she held up one hand, and waited. Ethan looked at him. Tyler made a face without sound. Maddie hid her smile in a drink.

Hannah finished. Rose asked her another question. This time Tyler stayed quiet because he was listening.

Afterward they cleared without dividing into guests and hosts. Ethan took the plates, Tyler the heavier dishes, Hannah the glasses she could carry safely in two trips. Maddie put things away while Rose decided what needed keeping. Kit stood beside the sink long enough to wash the utensils before anybody could leave them to soak and forget them.

Ethan rinsed his hands, dried them, and went to finish packing.

He didn't rush. There was satisfaction in finding the shirt he'd thought he'd left somewhere else, folding it badly and then doing it again because the first attempt wouldn't fit. He separated the things he still needed in the morning. Set the charger beside his phone. Put the blue sweatshirt into the bag, then took it out and changed the order so he could reach it if the plane was cold.

For a moment he stood with both hands on the open bag, trying to remember what the room had looked like when he'd arrived. Friday had brought its own hurry: people to see, a game waiting, Lucia arriving from work, Hannah standing beside him before the head start ran out. He could remember the sound of all of them laughing in the woods more clearly than he'd remember which shirt he'd worn.

He checked the corners of the room. Nothing he needed on the floor. Nothing hidden beneath the chair. The sweatshirt wasn't forgotten this time.

Tyler appeared in the doorway and leaned one shoulder against it.

"Done?"

"Nearly."

"Mom wants to know if you're coming back down."

"Yeah."

His brother stayed. Ethan put the last folded thing in place, checked the pocket where he kept the travel things, and closed the bag most of the way. He'd need it open once more in the morning. That didn't mean he had to leave it spread across the room like a problem waiting to happen.

Tyler reached past him for a shirt he'd missed on the chair.

"That yours?" Ethan asked.

"Yeah."

"I thought it was mine."

"I know."

Ethan laughed. Tyler took it back without explaining how it had got there. The ordinary mix-up made leaving feel less ceremonial, which helped. Ethan could put his own things in a bag and still be the brother who'd nearly packed somebody else's shirt.

"Good weekend," Tyler said.

"Yeah."

"Should do it again."

"We will."

He meant that without trying to name the date. Tyler looked at him, nodded once, and put a hand against the back of his head, a brief rough touch that turned into a squeeze at his neck before he let go.

"Come on."

Ethan followed him downstairs and found Hannah waiting beside the table where she'd been working while they were out. The puzzle lay complete, its difficult strip of sky joined to the rest without any of the gaps he'd imagined when she showed him the photograph that morning.

"You finished," he said.

"Yeah." She smiled. "I think."

"What do you mean, you think?"

"Look at that bit."

She pointed to a place near the edge where two nearly identical shades met. Ethan bent closer. He could see the fit, the tiny line between them, a difference in color that could've been the printed picture or the angle of the light.

"Looks right," he said.

"That's what Maddie said."

"Then probably."

Tyler leaned over his shoulder, inspected it for less than a second, and said it was definitely correct. Hannah gave him a look.

"You didn't look."

"I did."

"Longer."

He obeyed, smiling at Ethan as he bent again. This time he pointed out the way the line continued into the next piece. Hannah followed it with one finger, careful not to shift anything, and nodded with obvious relief.

"Okay."

Ethan stayed beside her while Tyler went to get his drink. He could find the corner they'd worked on together now, the little irregular shape he'd rejected before Maddie saw the darker line. In the whole picture it was hardly noticeable. He knew where it was anyway.

"What're you going to do with it?" he asked.

"Leave it a bit. Then put it away."

"Not doing it again immediately?"

"No." She laughed. "Not that one."

He smiled. She had other things she wanted to do, another box somewhere, a book she'd started, people she'd be seeing after he left. The thought was comforting once he let it be. She could miss him and still have a whole afternoon he wasn't needed to improve.

"Take a picture first," he said.

"I did."

"Good."

She offered him her phone, not because he needed proof but because she wanted him to see the angle she'd chosen. He looked properly. The light made the joins less obvious, the completed picture larger than the part he'd held between two fingers that morning.

"Send me that one."

"I will."

He gave the phone back. Hannah touched his sleeve on the way past, a quick little pull to make sure he was coming, and went to claim her place before Tyler could take it. Ethan followed, letting the puzzle remain on the table where she wanted it, finished for now and waiting to be put away when she was ready.

Hannah had found the remote. She held it against her chest when Tyler looked toward it, which told Ethan enough about the discussion he'd missed. Maddie sat beside Rose, both looking through the photographs Hannah had promised to show. Kit had brought mugs out and was trying to decide where to put the one nobody had claimed.

Ethan took it when he was offered. Warm, not too hot, the familiar weight settling into both hands. He sat where Hannah moved her legs to let him, careful not to knock the glass she'd put on the coaster.

"What're we watching?" he asked.

"We're deciding," she said.

Tyler made a noise. Hannah pointed the remote at him without pressing anything.

"You picked this morning."

"I know."

"Then stop."

He sat on Ethan's other side and gave up with more ease than Hannah appeared to expect. She looked briefly suspicious, then turned back toward the screen. Maddie offered a suggestion that Rose liked and Tyler didn't object to. Hannah considered it, asked Ethan whether he'd seen it, and received an honest answer that he'd seen enough to know he wouldn't mind it again.

That settled more than a strong opinion would've. She chose it before anyone could change the question, put the remote on the table, and sat back.

Rose asked Ethan to move the little table closer before he sat all the way back. He did, careful of the mugs, then waited while she made sure Maddie could reach without leaning forward. Kit nudged the lamp away from the edge. Hannah caught the remote before it slid, put it somewhere firmer, and finally seemed satisfied with the arrangement. Ethan sat again. His place had become comfortable through half a dozen small adjustments, most made by somebody else while he was paying attention to the screen. He put his hand around the mug and let the warmth settle into his fingers.

The room adjusted around the beginning. A lamp stayed on because Rose wanted it. Kit moved a cushion behind his back. Maddie put her phone away after sending one last message Ethan didn't see. Tyler shifted his knees so Hannah could stretch without being kicked whenever he moved.

Ethan drank, put the mug down, and let the screen take some of his attention. He knew the shape of the opening without needing to remember the exact scene. It gave him room to notice the people beside him instead of trying to decide whether he should be having a more memorable last evening.

Hannah leaned forward at the first part she liked. Tyler smiled at her, caught Ethan seeing it, and looked back at the television. Rose said something quietly to Maddie, who nodded and moved her mug farther from the edge.

The film went on. Ethan followed enough to laugh in the right places, missed a short exchange when Kit asked him to pass something, and didn't ask for it replayed. Nothing here depended on catching every word.

At one point Hannah got up to fetch the notebook. She brought it to Kit, waited until he looked away from the screen, and pointed at the dates she'd written. He read them, asked one practical question, and said they'd look properly tomorrow.

"Okay," she said.

No argument. Ethan watched her put it down where she wouldn't lose it, then return to the couch with the same determined care she used when something mattered. He didn't tell her that tomorrow would have other things in it. Kit knew. Hannah knew. They could still leave a question ready to be answered.

"You're smiling," Tyler said quietly.

"Am I?"

"Yeah."

Ethan looked at the screen. "It's funny."

Tyler glanced at the scene, plainly unconvinced, but didn't make him explain. He leaned back and let his shoulder rest against Ethan's. Ethan let the contact stay instead of shifting to prove he didn't need it.

He was tired now. Not the ache of Friday's running or the full, sun-warmed heaviness after Saturday. A quieter tiredness, arriving because there was no longer anything waiting for him to organize before he could sit down. The bag was nearly packed. The flight existed. The drawer in the loft could wait until he got home and sent Dad a picture.

There would be work when he returned. Classes. Groceries. People he wanted to see. A phone he would look at too quickly when a particular name appeared. None of it had been put on hold forever because he'd spent a weekend here. He'd go back into it carrying the things he'd been allowed to set down for a while.

Maddie laughed at something on the screen, quick and unguarded. Ethan looked over. Rose was laughing too, a hand lifted near her mouth. Kit shook his head at both of them as if the scene hadn't deserved quite that much, then smiled when Rose looked at him.

Ethan loved them with an ease that startled him when he noticed it. Not new. Not simple in every part. Just present, sitting around a room with mugs and cushions and a remote Hannah kept checking was still within reach.

He didn't need to say it now to make it real.

The pause came because Kit wanted to get up, and once he did, everybody discovered they wanted something. Water for Hannah. Another hot drink for Rose. Maddie stood to help before Ethan could, then told him to stay when he began moving his feet.

"I've got it."

He sat. Tyler went with Kit to the kitchen, leaving Ethan and Hannah the whole couch for perhaps thirty seconds. She immediately put her feet where Tyler had been.

"He'll make you move," Ethan said.

"I know."

She smiled and left them there anyway. Ethan looked toward the dark window, where the room reflected back over the faint shapes outside. The yard was beyond it, emptied of the weekend's chairs, still holding the places where they'd been.

Hannah turned toward him. "Will you send me the song?"

"What song?"

"The one you were talking about."

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Not now. Later."

"Okay."

He'd remember. If he didn't, she'd ask again. There was comfort in the certainty that forgetting one small thing wouldn't be the same as leaving her behind.

Tyler returned, saw his occupied seat, and looked at Hannah. She moved before he had to ask, laughing when he sat too close to the space she'd reclaimed. Maddie handed Ethan water on her way back to Rose. He thanked her, drank, and set it within reach.

Kit asked whether everyone was ready. There was a brief search for the remote, which had slid beneath the edge of the cushion, then the film continued.

Ethan settled lower. His shoulder remained against Tyler's. Hannah tucked her feet beneath herself and leaned far enough toward him that her hair brushed his sleeve. Across the room, Maddie and Rose were talking under their breath about a detail both had noticed, Kit listening without admitting he was interested.

He could still feel the afternoon's walk in his calves if he paid attention. The warmth of the mug remained in his hands after he'd put it down. Somewhere in the house, his bag waited with enough space left for the last things.

On the screen a door opened. Hannah laughed before the others, because she'd remembered what came next. Tyler nudged Ethan when he missed the beginning of the joke. Ethan turned back, caught enough of it, and laughed with them.

Then he stayed where he was.