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out the house and make some recommendations, maybe show it to some people.”
    “Why?”
    “So maybe someone will buy it.”
    “But we’re not going to sell it.”
    “Well, we’ll see how it goes.”
    “You’re not listening to me,” I say. “I don’t want to sell it. That doesn’t mean maybe. That means no.”
    “Seriously, Ginny? I don’t see how you get a veto in this situation. It’s not like you need all that space.”
    “You want to kick me out of my house?”
    “No, I just, no! Parker! Get back here! Listen, sis, I gotta go, just keep an eye out for Angelica, she’s a real sweetheart. Start pulling together some of the stuff for charity.”
    “Charity?”
    She says, “I could have sworn I told you this. Didn’t I? We need to pack up their clothes for donation regardless. That’s in the will. That’s what they wanted.”
    “You’ve seen the will?”
    “We’ll talk about that later. Start packing up the clothes in their bedroom, okay? Make yourself useful. I’ll be there when I can.”
    “Okay,” I say, and hang up. She can’t know the effect she has on me. Otherwise she’d behave differently. She couldn’t know that if she tells me to do something, I don’t want to do it, and as soon as she tells me not to do something, it makes me want to. With Ma it wasn’t this bad. With Amanda, I feel much more contrary.
    I try to see things from Amanda’s point of view. This is an exercise the advice columnists generally advocate. They have different ways of saying it. Take a new angle. Pivot ninety degrees. Remember that the villain is the hero of his own story. Put yourself in her shoes. I’ve tried putting myself in Amanda’s shoes before but it doesn’t work. I’m too literal. I can’t stop picturing her shoes, and how uncomfortable they must feel, and I never get to the emotional stuff.
    Maybe I should just do what I would do if this were an ordinary day. Of course if it were ordinary Ma would be here. In the spring orsummer I’d go with her to the community garden first thing in the morning, before anyone else got there, but now it’s winter. If I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted to cook for breakfast, I’d stay in bed and open my laptop. I’d visit thirty-seven food blogs to check for updates, then five daily advice columns, and then nine cooking sites, and finally Kitcherati, which is my favorite. I like eGullet and Serious Eats but they both spend a lot of time talking about restaurants, and I only care about the cooking and not the eating, so Kitcherati is the best place for me.
    They say you learn by doing, but you don’t have to. If you learn only from your own experience, you’re limited. By reading the Internet you can find out more. What grows in what season. The best way to strip an artichoke. What type of onions work best in French onion soup. Endless detail on any topic. You can learn from people who are experimenting with Swiss buttercream, or perfecting their gluten-free pumpernickel crackers, or taste-testing everything from caviar to frozen pizza to ginger ale. All of their failures keep you from having to fail in the same way.
    I reach for my laptop, but then change my mind. Maybe I should do what Amanda suggests after all. If I’m organized when she gets here, maybe she’ll stop worrying about me. Then again, if she’s made up her mind to worry, there’s probably not much I can do to stop her.
    The house is quiet but not silent. I get up out of bed and walk downstairs. The stairs creak just like I expect them to. A car goes by in the street with a soft whoosh like I expect it to. The morning light beams in through the skylight at the front of the stairs just like I expect it to. I stand on the second-floor landing and hug myself around the waist. It’s a big house. Everything feels large, and empty, and permanent, the same way it has forever.
    I had just gotten used to living here in Ma and Dad’s absence, and now I need to get used to the idea