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one?”
    “What for? My whole personal life is pretty much you guys, and I enjoy choosing your gifts.”
    “I know.” I took her arm and led her out of her office,where the culprit work had consumed so much of her. I would make it my business, this visit, to distract her from work as much as possible, to fill her up emotionally. Lexy would definitely help with that.
    I steered her to the corner of her bedroom next to a window where she had made a sitting area with two plush black armchairs and a small steel and glass table. Up close, I saw it was a curio table with a removable top. Inside the display were Julie’s own glass cats along with some of her other memorabilia and miscellany: our mother’s wedding ring (I had Dad’s), a tiny enamel box containing our mingled baby teeth and identical locks of our baby hair, an opal ring whose provenance was a mystery to me, three antique miniature toy cars from an abandoned urge to collect, a few hair elastics, and a small glass dish of earrings, mingled among which I saw her pair of diamonds that matched my own. Zircons, actually, fake diamonds, but no less twinkly when we turned our heads in the light. They had been a new-baby gift, from her to both of us, a few months after Lexy was born.
    “Isn’t it inconvenient keeping your jewelry in there?” I asked.
    “Sometimes at night I sit here and read and, you know...”
    I did know. We had always shared a habit of removing our accessories, and sometimes elements of our clothing, when we wanted to relax.
    Julie set my glass cats on top of the table so they seemed to hover in space above hers. “Want to mix them?” she asked. “Like when we were kids?”
    I smiled. “Good idea.”
    She lifted the top of the table and together we arranged my cats with hers. Then she sat back in one of the black chairs, kicking off one of her cowboy boots and then the other, revealing hot pink socks. I sat in the matching chair and pried off my shoes, peeled off my socks, and splayed my toes to feel the cool air on my skin. Reaching into the open table, I picked up a blue elastic and put my hair into a high ponytail; then I took off my zircons and impulsively placed them in Julie’s earring dish. She seemed to stiffen a little when I did that.
    “What?” I said. “They’re exactly the same, like the cats.”
    “I had an infection in one of my ears recently. Didn’t I tell you?”
    “No.”
    “I never got around to sterilizing my earrings.”
    “Well, then, I’ll sterilize them all tomorrow. How’s that?” I smiled, coaxing her agreement.
    “Fine.” She leaned back and sighed. “But next time, ask first.”
    I let her have that last word. Why not? We weren’t little girls anymore; we were grown-ups and she had a point: boundaries mattered. Which made me regret mixing the glass cats, having earmarked mine for Lexy.
    “Do you remember our old game?” I asked her. “ I wish on you flood —”
    “Witch’s Wishes. I haven’t thought of that in years.”
    It was a game we’d invented during our mother’s losing fight against cancer. “I wish on you fire!” “I wish on you starvation!” “I wish on you plague!” We wished every horrible possible thing on each other, andthe more we played it, the stronger and braver we grew. “I wish on you destruction!” “I wish on you decay!” But never death; death was what we were steeling ourselves against. Even at ten, watching our mother waste away, we knew death was our mortal enemy. When she finally died, we began to wish death on each other, too, to strengthen ourselves against it.
    “It never worked, Jules, did it? To ward off anything.”
    “No, but it got us through some tough days.”
    She was right; it had provided a kind of shield, even if imaginary. I was so glad to be here with Julie. She was the only person with whom I could discuss our past in shorthand without our parents’ deaths throwing a vast, tragic shadow over everything. Their deaths were tragic, but