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“Because it’s a historical document,” Wyatt says.

“Anyway.” Cash waves all of them off. “Sondheim. Go. Prove the captain right or expose him as a fraud, I’m fine with either outcome.”

I don’t even have to think about it. “Saturday Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Anyone Can Whistle, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion.” I pick up my tea. “I left out the ones where he only did lyrics, because if I’d included West Side Story you’d have pretended to know it, and I didn’t want to give you the win.”

The room is quiet for a second.

“I’m a little scared of you,” Cash says, with deep sincerity.

“Good.”

Across the room, Beau is looking at me over the top of his controller with an expression I’ve decided not to catalog, and he says, to Cash, not taking his eyes off me, “Told you.”

“Okay, but here’s what I want to know,” Margo says, settling in with the relish that means she’s about to start something. “How does a hockey house this size have negative groceries? There is a single egg in that fridge. One. It’s been in there long enough to have opinions.”

“That’s Theo’s egg,” Cash says.

“Why does Theo have a personal egg?”

“I don’t have a personal egg,” Theo says.

“You labeled it.” Wyatt doesn’t look up from his phone. “There’s a Post-it. It says Theo’s. On an egg.”

“Because someone keeps eating my eggs, so I bought one egg, and I labeled it, to make a point about the egg situation in this house.” Theo says this with the flat gravity of a man presenting evidence in court. “It’s working. The egg is still there.”

“The egg is still there,” Margo agrees, “because no one wants the sad labeled egg of a man who’s clearly unwell.”

“I’m extremely well.”

“You have an emotional support egg, Theo.”

“Okay,” I say, because someone has to, “this is the most functional dysfunction I’ve ever witnessed, and I grew up around real commitment to the form. The egg stays. The egg has earned its place. It’s the only one in this house with a clearly defined boundary and I respect it.”

Theo points the wooden spoon at me. “She gets it.”

“She gets the egg,” Cash says, mournful, like he’s lost something. “Beau, your girlfriend sided with the egg.”

“She’s right, though,” Beau says, easy, from the floor. “The egg’s got a boundary. That’s more than you’ve got.”

And the room dissolves into Cash defending his boundaries — he has many, he insists, they’re just flexible — and I’m laughing, the real one, the one that gets all the way out before I can put it back, and across the chaos I catch Beau watching me laugh with a look I’m not going to catalog, and I let myself, for one second, not catalog it.

The thing I do catalog, because I can’t help it, because reading rooms is the one skill that never switches off, is Margo and Theo.

They’ve been at it since we got here. Low-grade, constant, the kind of bickering that runs under a room like a current — Margo reorganizing his kitchen with the breezy confidence of a woman who has never once doubted she’s right, and Theo, who guards his space the way a dog guards a bone, letting her, which is the part that doesn’t track. Theo doesn’t let people touch his things. I’ve watched him relocate his own water glass three inches because Cash set it down wrong. But Margo’s moved his entire spice situation, alphabetized something, and told him twice that his sauce needs acid, and instead of throwing her out, he’s standing at the stove adding lemon, jaw tight, saying nothing.

“You’re welcome,” Margo says, not looking up from whatever she’s now doing to his cutting board.

“I didn’t thank you.”

“You added the lemon. That’s a thank-you in your language. You’re very fluent in passive-aggressive gratitude, it’s honestly impressive.”

“It needed acid. You being right about it is a coincidence.”

“Theo.” She turns, leans back against his counter — his counter, the one he wiped down twice — and looks up at him, all six feet four of him scowling down at all five feet five of her, and the air between them does a thing the air between people does. “It’s okay to like that I was right. It won’t kill you. Probably.”

“You’re standing in my workspace.”

“I’m aware of exactly where I’m standing.”