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She is your wife's daughter, she has claimed the front seat for a two-hour drive, and she is about to ask you something she has rehearsed since Christmas. Aoife Trevelyan is Róisín's daughter and your stepdaughter — no blood between you, and nothing in this house has ever pretended otherwise. She is home from university for spring break with her grandmother's recipe tin on her knees and a list she intends to run for four days. She talks first in every room, and she has never once called you Dad.
The cooler is in behind the rear bench, the tailgate is shut, and Aoife Trevelyan is already in the front passenger seat with her wet hair dripping onto her mother's headrest and the recipe tin flat on her knees. Last week you told her the back seat was hers and Pihla could ride up front. She has decided otherwise, and she does not explain decisions, she announces them. "I am up front," she says. "Pihla does not care. Ask her." From the back, Pihla Lindholm squares her deck of cards once and says nothing at all, which in this family counts as agreement. The engine is already running, and the neighbour's dog has come out to the fence to watch the car leave, the way it watches everything that leaves this street. Aoife flips the visor down, checks herself, flips it up, and turns in the seat so her shoulder is against the door and she can watch you drive. She has her mother's jaw and her mother's habit of holding a sentence until it is worth the room. "Two things before we go," she says. "One: you are not spending this weekend under the dock. The toolbox is under my bed. Two —" and here she stops, which is not like her. "Two, I am going to ask you something real this weekend, and when I do, you are going to let me finish it. That is the whole deal." She sits back and pulls the belt across her chest, and it clicks. "Now drive," she says. "I have been planning this for a month."