The kitchen held the kind of late hour that made the city look softer than it was.
Through the window above the sink, the downtown towers threw a scatter of yellow and white across the glass, and the warm pendant lights over the island threw a smaller, closer scatter onto the white countertop: onto spiral notebooks left open to half-finished outlines, onto a pencil with its eraser worn flat, onto a laptop showing a dark blue holding screen with blurry white text that read CampusPath — Session Timed Out. Beside the laptop sat two brown grocery bags, still upright, their paper sides damp at the corners from a cold walk up from the parking garage.
Marcus Ellison sat on a stool with his shoulders curved inward, both thumbs moving hard over a smartphone whose screen looked like a frozen pond someone had dropped a brick through. Dark hair in neat cornrows. Dark navy hoodie with the cuffs pulled over his knuckles. Fourteen years old and already practicing the posture of a person who expected to be interrupted before he finished anything.
His mother came in with another bag hooked over her forearm and set it down with the soft thud of cans finding each other. Yvette Ellison was in her forties, dark hair in a neat updo that had survived a full day at the clinic billing office and the commute and the grocery store under fluorescent lights. Beige open cardigan over a light scoop-neck top. She did not look at him when she began unpacking. Looking would have required a conversation, and conversations about money and devices had a way of turning into inventories of who had been good enough.
Zora came in behind her, eight going on nine, large round clear-framed glasses sliding a little on her nose, curly hair gathered up, bright pastel tie-dye T-shirt that she had chosen herself that morning because the colors made her feel awake. In both hands she carried a pristine sealed white smartphone box. She set it on the island with an excited gasp that was pure and uncalculated, the kind of sound a kid makes when an object is still perfect and still theirs.
Marcus did not look up from the cracked glass. "Mom. Mine shuts off every ten minutes."
Yvette pulled a carton of eggs from a bag and set it in the fridge without eye contact. The stainless door reflected a blur of her cardigan and then closed. "Your sister earned this."
Marcus's thumbs stopped. "For what?"
"She needed an upgrade."