Harrison stood at the end of the hallway with his phone in his hand, as if he were deciding whether to call someone who could make me smaller.
"Mom, you're being ridiculous."
"I am being sixty-five," I said. "It turns out that comes with a spine."
The days that followed arranged themselves into a cold domestic choreography.
Sloan stopped speaking to me except through Harrison, and even then only in sentences designed to travel. She announced, on a Thursday evening while I was reheating soup, that there was no food in the house worth eating. She stood in front of the open refrigerator as if it had personally insulted her.
"There's literally nothing," she said to Harrison, loud enough for the hallway. "I'm not cooking with this garbage. We should just order out. Again."
I set my spoon down.