My eighteen-year-old brother reached for one piece of chicken at dinner, and my mother-in-law slapped him so hard his fork hit the plate. “You greedy little freeloader!” she screamed. My husband didn’t defend him. He looked at me and said, “Don’t make this worse.” Four years of keeping the peace ended right there—because Diane still believed she was standing in her son’s house.

“Pickles?” she said.

Noah smiled nervously.

“My dad makes them.”

“I can see that.”

She picked up the jar with two fingers.

“These are homemade?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Diane hated being called ma’am.

She also hated people who didn’t call her ma’am.

That was the kind of game she liked to play.

I took the jar from her before she could say anything else.

“Dad’s dill?”

Noah nodded.

“With the garlic.”

“Perfect.”

I hugged him again.

For a few minutes, I let myself enjoy having my little brother in my home.

I showed him where I had put clean towels.

I cleared space in the guest room.

We checked the weather forecast for move-in day.

He told me he was nervous about his first economics class.

He asked whether the train system was hard to figure out.

Normal things.

The kind of things an eighteen-year-old should be thinking about before college.