"Bry."
"And I liked it." She said it to her hands. "When she said it. Some of it. I liked thinking about it. Before Leti it was just me and you and Gran and it was quiet and nobody played Taylor Swift and nobody's stuff was in the bathroom. I was mean to Ampi sometimes because of it. Not like, hitting. Just. She'd ask me to draw with her and I'd say I was busy. And then in September she gave me her markers. All of them. She just put them on my desk. She didn't even say anything, she just put them there and left. And I knew they were from her birthday. And I kept them." Her voice went small. "I've been using them. I know I should give them back. I feel sick every time I use them and I keep using them."
He got up off the floor. He sat on the edge of her bed, near her chair, and he did not touch her yet. "She also gave you socks," he said. "With cats on them. In your laundry."
Bryony stared at him. "Those were from Ampi?"
"Apparently."
"I thought Leti bought them." Bryony put her face in her hands. "I thought Leti bought them and I didn't say thank you on purpose."
He did touch her then. He put his hand on the back of her wet hair and left it there.
"Gran is in some trouble," he said. "With me. Not with you. She did something to Leti that wasn't kind, and it was a long time ago and it wasn't a long time ago, and I'm going to go talk to her about it. That's between me and her. She loves you. That's still true. You don't have to stop loving her. Nobody's going to ask you to do that."
"Was Orlando because of it?" Bryony said through her hands. "The no?"
He thought about lying, and he thought about Leti at the kitchen table saying that's fair, that one's fair.
"Some of it," he said. "Some of it was the roof. And some of it was grownups being angry at each other in ways that you got stuck in the middle of. You shouldn't have been. That's on me more than anybody. I'm sorry, Bry. I'm sorry you crossed yourself off the fridge."
She did not say anything for a long time. Then she took her hands away from her face and picked up one of the brush markers, a deep blue one, and held it in her lap, turning it over.