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It took a good long time, long enough for Talia to bang on the door not once but twice. When Shira emerged in a cloud of steam, it was good and late, and she was ready to throw on her coziest sweats and fall into bed. Which she did, and she slept like the dead.

When she woke up, she immediately grabbed for her phone—yes, she knew it wasn’t healthy and she should probably start the day with a peaceful meditation and analog breakfast or whatever, and yes, she would keep doing it anyway—and found it full of notifications.

Which was weird. She blinked at it, and it blinked back, another text popping up. This never happened, not since she’d gotten kicked from the group chat with Danica and Ellery and Nora—she was in a few new group chats with the synagogue and with some other artists she’d befriended, but she limited notifications on those.

Her phone buzzed again. She hated the spring of hope in her chest—maybe, years later, Danica would realize she’d been an idiot and add her back in. Of course that wasn’t the case. They were never going to come back. It had been years—why did it still sting?

She picked up her phone to find that all the notifications were from…Leo? Her heart quickened. What in the—

Her phone buzzed in her hand. A call. She answered it before she could read any of the texts. “Leo? What’s up?”

“Shira.” There was a sob caught in his throat. “My dad died.”

The dust motes swirling around her slowed and sparkled, then stilled in the air. The sound of her neighbor running their snow blower dulled and became muffled like she’d pressed her pillow around her ears. “What?”

And then immediately felt like the cold, soggy, shredded latke remains in her trash for making him repeat himself. “My dad died?” he said, like it was a question. “He’s dead? He didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, and I went to check on him, and…and he was gone.”

Shira plopped down on her bed, cold spreading through her body from the chest out. “Oh, god. Leo, I’m so sorry. I don’t…I don’t know what to say.” She felt a swell of grief, not so much for the man himself, but for Leo.

“I was hoping you could help,” Leo said, and Shira sat up straight at attention, nearly vibrating. Yes. She could help. She was good at that. “I don’t think my dad personally would care, but my grandparents and my aunt are insisting everything is done according to Jewish tradition. So—”

“So burial should be the next day, right,” Shira said, her mind racing. “And you’re going to want to sit shiva here?”

“Yeah. At my dad’s house. I’m swamped trying to contact the funeral home and figure out how to get the…how to get him back, and book our new flights, and I just…I can’t do it all. Could you prep the house for the shiva? Maybe order some food and get things picked up? I’ll pay you back, of course.”

Like that was the biggest concern of the day. “Of course,” she said. “Of course I will, Leo. And don’t worry about the money at this point.” She wished she could just say don’t worry about it at all, but being an admin didn’t exactly rake in the big bucks. “Do any of our neighbors have an extra key?”

“I’m sure somebody does, but you’d have to go around knocking on doors and asking, and then you’ll have to tell everyone why,” Leo said. The sob had trickled out of his voice, and now he only sounded thoughtful. Having a concrete task to focus on at this moment was probably useful for him. “So you can do that, or you could harness your history of crime. If you’re caught, I won’t press charges. And once you get inside, there’s a spare key on the Rutgers lanyard hanging from the leash rack by the front door.”

“Thank you,” Shira said, her mind already busy with how she could do it. “Okay, I will make sure your house is clean and set up for a shiva, and I’ll get the food ready, too. Oh, and what about Neptune? Do you want me to pick him up?”

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” Leo said, sounding startled. The poor dog. “I’m going to call the boarding place and give you permission to pick him up. You don’t mind, right?”

Talia would definitely not love getting dog all over her car, but she owed Shira this one after not picking the doughnuts up a few years ago and forcing her sister into a brief life of crime. Shira could’ve gone to jail! Which would give you something interesting to paint about in a new show, whispered a small hidden part of her.

Shira didn’t immediately banish the idea. That voice, which she’d crushed down after everything that had happened with her last show and with Danica, had started popping up again now that she wasn’t so busy with freelance work or at the art gallery. Had started whispering ideas again, a few of which she’d actually written down to noodle on further. This one was not getting written down.

She’d been quiet for too long. “Of course I don’t mind,” Shira said. “Neptune’s my buddy. Text or call me if you need anything else, okay? I’ll make sure you’re patched through do not disturb.”

“The ultimate honor,” Leo said wryly. Shira waited for him to hang up, but he stayed quietly breathing on the other end, so she stayed, too.

After what felt like ages, he finally said, “It doesn’t feel real.”

She was definitely not qualified to talk him through this. She’d been fortunate enough never to lose anyone close to her aside from grandparents at the end of their lives, when it was really more of a mercy than anything. But he was her friend. She would do her best. “I can imagine,” she said. “I mean, I can’t imagine. It happened so fast. But you don’t have to process everything right now, right? One step at a time. Get things sorted with the flights, then the funeral home, okay? Let Emily and your aunt help.” She had no idea what shape his grandparents were in. “Let other people help. We all want to help.”

That was all she could do. She couldn’t hold him while he cried; that was Emily’s job. But she could help.

“Thanks, Shira,” he said quietly. “I appreciate it.”

The funny thing was that preparing for a shiva really wasn’t all that different from preparing for a party. “Is it tacky to use the Hanukkah garlands as decorations?” Shira said to Talia, brandishing the glittering silver-and-blue decorations.

Talia rolled her eyes. “Isn’t it tacky to joke about this?”

Shira had enlisted her sister’s help to prep Leo’s house, mostly so that she wouldn’t have to do it alone. When Talia had found out that prepping the house required breaking into it, her eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “I knew those years practicing how to pick locks with bobby pins would come in handy,” she’d rhapsodized as they crept through the darkness, by which Shira meant an overcast sky at eleven a.m. “Do you think we’ll need to break a window? I brought an extra shirt to shield my hand with as I punch through a pane.”

It was extra funny hearing Talia say this given how she looked now: like an assistant rabbi in a rural area, with her sleek brown bob, no black eyeliner or heavy mascara, orthotic sneakers instead of combat boots. Sometimes Shira looked at her and blinked and saw the version of her sister that had been there most of her life, like a shadow overlay, but that wasn’t her anymore.

“I think that’s the last thing Leo needs to deal with right now,” Shira said, slightly concerned for her sister’s future flock. As it turned out, no picking locks or breaking windows would be required, as one of the kitchen windows had been left unlocked. Talia neatly popped out the screen; Shira hoisted her up so that she could shimmy through the opening, then circle around to open the back door.