Hattie accepted this as sound legal reasoning and towed Celeste to the couch. June emerged from the kitchen in an apron that said KISS THE COOK and then, in smaller letters, OR DON'T, I'M BUSY. She hugged Celeste once, briefly, the hug of a woman who did not use contact as currency.
"Bread," June said. "Bless you. Gideon almost bought those soft rolls that taste like sadness."
"I was going to buy good bread," Gideon protested from the hallway, hanging Celeste's coat.
"You were going to buy convenient bread," June said. "Different species."
Dinner was imperfect in the ways that make food taste like belonging: the roast slightly overdone at the edge, the potatoes excellent, the gravy rescued twice. Hattie explained her cardboard fox's backstory in detail that involved a subway and a cousin in New Jersey. Gideon carved awkwardly. Celeste laughed without rationing it. For a while the evening did what evenings sometimes do when nobody forces them: it held.
After dessert—ice cream with expensive chocolate sauce June had stolen from her own emergency stash—Hattie yawned with her whole body and was escorted toward bed with promises of one book. Celeste read the shorter fox book aloud in the guest room while June leaned in the doorway and Gideon lingered in the hall pretending to check a thermostat that did not need checking. Hattie's eyes closed before the last page. Celeste finished anyway, because stories deserve endings even when their audiences have already traveled ahead.
In the living room again, coats not yet in hand, the two trees shone at their different scales. Celeste stood near Button and touched one branch with the tip of a finger.
"She is doing well," she said.
"I water her every other day," Gideon said. "Hattie talks to her. June pretends she does not find that moving."
"I find it moving," June said from the kitchen, unashamed. "I also find the garbage needing to go out. I am going downstairs. You two have twelve minutes of unsupervised adulthood. Use them like people with sense."
The door clicked. The apartment settled.
"I keep wanting to apologize again," Gideon said. "For the star. For the silence. For buying the loud tree as if volume could replace intention."
"You can apologize once more total," Celeste said. "Then we retire the category for the year."