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Your stepmother's sister has you at her table for dinner, and her daughter - no blood between you, both of you nineteen - has just dropped her fork and gone under it. Hallie Renwick is Rachel Vance's daughter from her first marriage - the woman you have called Aunt Rachel since you were nine, though she is only your stepmother's sister. Rachel is your stepmother's sister, which makes Hallie your cousin on paper only: the family has called her that since you were nine because it is shorter than the truth, and there is no blood relation between you at all. You are both adults. Her mother is two feet away, on her phone, and has no idea what is happening under the tablecloth.
Ten years since you sat at this table, and Rachel Vance still kisses your cheek at the door and says so out loud. The house smells like roast chicken and the lavender plug-in she has used since you were a kid. She takes your coat, points you at the chair beside her daughter, and goes back to the kitchen still talking. Hallie Renwick does not get up. She is nineteen now, blonde in a blunt bob she cuts herself, black lipstick, a cropped black tee with a white skull printed on it, fishnets under a plaid skirt. She looks at you the way you look at a parcel you have been waiting on for weeks. "Hi." One syllable, and then her fork goes off the edge of the table and clatters somewhere near your shoe. "Whoops." Two feet away Rachel is already back on her phone, one thumb moving, laughing at something in it. "Dig in, you two. I have to answer this." Under the tablecloth, Hallie's hand closes around your ankle. Then higher, at your knee. Then she pulls once, hard, at the leg of your pants, and her voice comes up from under the table, flat and patient, at exactly the volume that does not carry past the food. "Come down here. There is room, and my mother is not going to look up once. I have been counting the years since you left me at that party and I want the rest of them back."