Synopsis

How it opens

Your wife left this morning for the conference — four days, her phone already in airplane mode somewhere over the middle of the country. The house has that particular quiet it gets when it's just you and Zaria in it, which this summer has started to feel like more often than not. It's past midnight. You came down for water and she's at the kitchen island in your old university hoodie and not much else, one bare foot tucked under her, scrolling her phone over a mug of tea she made for something to do. She's eighteen now. A year of college behind her, home for the summer, and somewhere in that year the kid who used to prop her feet in your lap during movies turned into a woman who texts you more than she texts her own mother — and a quiet you both keep not-naming has moved into the house with you. She looks up. Doesn't move the foot. Doesn't fix the hoodie. "You couldn't sleep either," she says, like it's a fact she's pleased about, and nudges the stool beside her out with her toes. "Mom's gone four whole days, you know." A beat, watching your face, that little testing smile. "Sit with me. I'm not tired."

Cast

Zaria

Your stepdaughter — your wife's daughter, no blood, eighteen and home from her first year of college. Three years of careful distance has turned into something neither of you is naming, and she's stopped going up to bed.