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Nora only from the back, only from where she was safe from the tears. When hit face-to-facewith them (in the kitchen, at the grocery store), her cheeks went pale, her skin tone almost sallow. Nora suspected Mariana felt physically ill when she cried, actually experiencing nausea. It must be nice to be so strong you felt queasy in the face of weakness.
    “It’s New Year’s Eve,” said Mariana desperately. “You can’t cry. It’s bad luck. Or something. Have some goat cheese. Think of the kids.” A pause. “Get it?”
    The damned crying—maybe it was a symptom of something. She
really
wanted to google it, but she was worried it would confirm a perimenopause diagnosis. Every day for at least the last five or six weeks, she’d either fought off tears or given in to them somewhere quietly, privately. Once Ellie had almost caught her, but she’d pleaded something was in her contact lenses, and Ellie, who didn’t seem to be able to notice anyone but herself lately, had bought it.
    Tears trickled down Nora’s face. She wiped them away impatiently. “I’m not crying.”
    “You are. God, Jesus, you are.
Stop
it. Please?” Mariana’s hands were fists in front of her belly.
    “Are we going to box?”
    “Will it stop you from crying?”
    “I swear to everything holy, I’m not crying. This stupid water keeps coming out of my eyes. I think it’s allergies.”
    From the direction of the kitchen came Ellie’s voice. She’d sneaked down the stairs—when? How much had she heard? “Mom?”
    She sounded young. Small. “We’re in here. Just talking,” called Nora, scrubbing at her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
    “No, here. Don’t.” Mariana used a napkin, one of the cheerful poinsettia ones Nora had sewed herself, using discounted post-Christmas fabric she’d found one year. They had prompted an essay, actually, about finding joy in craft store sale bins.
    Mariana blotted carefully. “There. Blink. Good.”
    “Where’s that cheese?” Ellie poked her head into the room.
    “In here, chipmunk. Come give me a hug,” said Mariana.
    Nora watched the two of them embrace. Her sister and her daughter. If Mariana couldn’t handle tears, at least she handled happiness well. She was used to it, after all. Inside, Nora felt a tiny bloom of fear, a terrified algae spreading through her blood. She reached into her jeans pocket to touch the piece of beach glass she kept there. Smooth and warm, as usual.
    Then she stood with them. “I want more wine. Ellie? Sparkling apple cider? It’s your favorite.” She ignored the eye roll that went along with her daughter’s assent.
    They’d celebrate the New Year, by god, even if she had to drag them both along behind her.

Chapter Six
    “T en, nine, eight . . .”
    Maybe Ellie could tell Aunt Mariana about what had happened. Later. When the house was dark and her aunt was in the guest bed. Maybe she could sneak in and tell her.
    “Seven . . .”
    No. There wasn’t anything to tell.
    Three pairs of eyes were trained on Ellie’s phone, which she’d propped up against one of those candles Mom had said she wanted to carve but then hadn’t done anything with except light. She should have cleaned her screen. The black background of the clock was showing all the smudges, especially at the bottom where the keyboard normally was.
    “Six . . .”
    What would happen in the next year? A year and a half of high school felt like forever, but then she’d be somewhere else. Smith, if she was lucky, far away. Smith was her first choice, the college she’d spent the most time imagining herself at. It was thelargest of the Seven Sisters colleges. Any school that had turned out both Julia Child and Madeleine L’Engle was a good place to be, Ellie figured. UCLA was on the short list, too, and she was considering Portland, even though she had no clue what she wanted to do. To be. It was only the rest of her
life
at stake.
    “We know you’ll pick the school that’s best for