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And the strange family held together for another stretch.

Richard and Ethan actually did help at first. They took the trash out. They loaded the dishwasher. Vivienne felt the weight lift.

Then the slippage.

Within two weeks they were back to the couch. Within three they'd stopped noticing the mess entirely.

Vivienne reminded them. They pretended not to hear.

When she pushed, Ethan started weaponizing it back at her. Josephine carried a three-story brownstone. Your apartment isn't even half that. Why can't you handle it?

The comparison stung enough that she white-knuckled another stretch.

But the moment she got word of me in Boston, she bought a plane ticket.

She had hit her limit.

A woman who hadn't done a chore in six decades doesn't happily pick up after two men in her seventh.

I understood. Doesn't mean I cared.

I'd taken four decades to climb out of that marriage. Nothing was going to drag me back in.

I'd assumed Vivienne's visit was a one-off. We were in different cities now.

Then one afternoon, filming a reel at a farmers' market in Back Bay, I turned around and there was Ethan.

He walked up, plunked himself down in the chair opposite me, and — with no invitation — started picking at my food.

"Josephine. You're doing pretty well for someone who walked out."

"Eating pretty nicely for yourself, aren't you?"

"Did you think about what would happen to Dad and me when you sold the house?"

His face contorted into that familiar entitled outrage.

He grabbed my camera rig off the tripod and raised it to smash on the ground.