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grid of what Tim called “phony Colon-ies,” half-acre houses on one-acre lawns, houses with vinyl siding and each with two white colonnaded pillars holding up peaked porticoes—porches with light fixtures that Tim said cost more than the porches. Tim Brynn’s parents and brother lived there, on one of those spiffy streets with names that the Chicago developers imagined would appeal to upstate New York sensibilities—names such as Pumpkin Hollow and Concord Green and Roanoke Way.
    No one considered this place the “real” Ridgeline, although Tim envied his brother’s sodded lawn, which was like the softest green suede (Tim’s own lawn still occasionally sprouted alfalfa). But more of the in-towners were moving out to Bell Fields, where the walls might be thinner, but all the bathrooms had Jacuzzis. Gwenny liked the fact that her ranch had been a model and had been planted with at least six perennial gardens and a dozen fruit trees, to which she had added a dozen more gardens and six more fruit trees—until the facade itself was nearly completely concealed. Tim and his sister and brother said their parents’ house resembled the kind of place anyone called Hansel or Gretel should avoid.
    Campbell and Tim were in-town stalwarts. They held on, as did some older couples and some newlyweds—gentrifiers delighted at buying big old Gambrel houses for a song and then spending a hundred thousand dollars on new wiring and Jacuzzis.
    Campbell was wearing her clingy little black dress and a red Irish cloak Tim had given her for her birthday.
    “You look like a fallen woman,” their father said. Campbell got all gooey and flirty.
    Mallory wanted to gag.
    When they got to Aunt Kate and Uncle Kevin’s, Mally glanced around for new craft projects. This time, it was a snow village on the mantel—parent snow people and their three teeny round babies, made from Sculpey clay. Uncle Kevin and Aunt Kate’s house never seemed to accumulate big drifts of magazines and clean laundry no one folded that was just moved from one corner to another when someone swept the floor. Even though they also had three kids, younger than the twins and Adam, their house always looked ready for the arrival of a photography crew from an interior-decorating magazine. Aunt Kate did all sorts of things Mallory liked, in theory, although she would have rather had an appendectomy with a dull stick than do them herself. Aunt Kate had baked a loaf of braided bread and shellacked it, then tied a gingham ribbon around it to match her blue kitchen curtains and table napkins.
    Mallory didn’t even know if her family had cloth table napkins. Her mom put a roll of paper towels in the middle of the table and told everyone to grab one at dinner—when she was home for dinner. When she wasn’t, dinner was always what their father called “broccoli and something” that their mother had made earlier.
    “Why don’t you ever cook?” Mallory asked Tim. “Mom works. You work. She works as much as you work.”
    “Not really, because I own the store. There’s a lot more . . . bill paying and stuff. We have a deal about cooking. She cooks and I . . . built the garage,” Tim explained.
    “You built the garage once, for six months, but she’s been cooking for sixteen years,” Mally said. “It’s not really fair, is it?”
    “I take you to Sunday school,” Tim said.
    “And sleep in the car.”
    “She works nights!” Tim said. “She works ten twelve-hour days and then has two straight weeks off! Come on! I only get three weeks a year off! Plus, you work at the store. I thought you were on my side.”
    “I was,” Mallory said. “I guess I just didn’t realize I used to be a sports feminist and not a real feminist.”
    “Heating up the broccoli and chicken is considered cooking,” said Tim, in a last bid for his daughter’s respect.
    “Carrying in the bags is not considered shopping,” Mally retorted.
    For two weeks, Tim walked around pouting.
    Then, in