"That is unfair."
"It is predictive," June said. "You renovated your whole life after Dana left. New apartment. New running shoes. New insistence that empty corners were the problem. Some empty places are not problems. They are rooms people are still walking through."
Dana had been Gideon's partner for four years and had moved to Seattle in August with almost no cruelty and almost no explanation that satisfied him, which was its own kind of wound. He had not spoken her name aloud in six weeks. Hearing it in June's mouth made the kitchen feel smaller.
"I am not trying to fix Celeste," he said.
"Good," June said. "Fix the watering schedule for Button and leave the woman her own timing."
Tully, across the hall from Celeste, practiced a different kind of intervention. He knocked on a Tuesday with a cardboard box and Pocket winding around his ankles like a furred question mark.
"For the Bergen apartment," Tully said. "Bubble wrap. And my good marker. You write FRAGILE like you mean it or the world does not listen."
Celeste took the box. "You do not have to—"
"I know," Tully said. "That is why it counts. Also, Pocket has decided you are allowed to be sad in the hallway if you need to, but not past ten, because he sleeps."
She laughed, and the laugh cracked, and Tully pretended not to notice the crack, which was a mercy she filed under Neighborly Grace.
On Wednesday she went to her mother's apartment with Tully's marker and three empty boxes. The place smelled like dust and the ghost of the lavender soap her mother had used for decades. Celeste packed kitchen towels. She packed the chipped mug with the library logo. She opened the ornament closet and sat down on the floor as if her knees had negotiated a sudden treaty with gravity.
Inside were tissue-paper nests of glass balls, a wooden bird with one painted eye rubbed away, and the star—small, brass, dull with age—that had crowned every potted tree since Celeste was nine. She held the star in her palm and felt time arrange itself into a single bright point of pressure.
Her phone buzzed. Gideon: Reza says if we come in tonight he will not charge needle rent. Also June made soup and claims there is too much. No pressure. Only broth.
Celeste looked at the brass star. She typed: Soup is a serious offer. I can do forty minutes.