Alice came out to check on them, then went back to her room to read. A couple of hours later, Sophie went to get started on dinner. When Tristan tried to go with her to help, she pushed him back down and told him to stay with Bee and help her with the puzzle.

Bee gave a serious nod. “We’re getting this finished tonight.”

Tristan picked up the box and looked at the front. The image they were trying to create was a waterfall scene with unicorns. Judging by the two-dollar price sticker and the battered state of the box, Tristan guessed they'd bought it second-hand. "A thousand pieces. Might be tough."

“We’ve done a lot of tough things together. We can do this.”

“You’re right. We’ll get it done. We always do, don’t we?”

Bee nodded, her expression softening. "Thanks for coming to visit. I know it's a long drive, but I really missed having you around."

“I wanted to. My dad’s been a real dick lately. Being around people who actually like me is a nice change of pace.”

“What’s your dad been doing?”

"Oh, you know," Tristan shrugged one shoulder, trying to appear nonchalant, "the usual dad stuff. Nothing too extreme. He just wants to control every aspect of my life, and at sixteen, that starts to get under your skin."

"But he let you come here, didn't he?"

"He doesn't know where I am. He doesn't care," Tristan admitted, his voice tinged with bitterness.

“But you said…”

Tristan shook his head, cutting her off. "It's complicated. It doesn't really matter. It's not any kind of big deal stuff like what you went through with your parents."

“Are you sure? When I talked to you on the phone, your voice… well, it sounded pretty serious.”

Tristan forced a smile. “Ah, I’m just dramatic.”

"I've never known you to be dramatic, Trist," Bee said, her eyes searching his.

“Sorry I worried you. Nobody’s hurting me or anything. Promise.”

"That's good, but things can be more complicated than that. Even people with good parents can struggle, right? You don't need to meet certain criteria or adequately justify your feelings.”

Tristan offered her another smile, this one more genuine. “When did you get so wise?”

"I've had a lot of time to think, and sometimes my brain is even awake enough to do it," Bee said with a small laugh. "And Alice has rubbed off on me. She has a lot of smart things to say, and they all come straight from her heart. My parents never liked when I sounded smart. I guess because it made them feel dumb.”

“They are pretty dumb, to be fair.”

Bee pressed her lips together, considering her words carefully. “I wouldn’t say dumb, but… they make a lot of bad choices. I think that has more to do with fear and a whole pile of other issues than just not being smart, though.”

Tristan found the last piece of one of the unicorn’s heads and pressed it into place. “Hm. Relatable.”

You're nothing like them, but I guess what I said can apply to different people in different ways. I really hope you're not in any trouble," Bee said, her voice filled with genuine concern.

"I'm fine. I just need a few days to clear my head, then I'll sort things out," Tristan said, standing up from his spot in front of the coffee table. "Anyway, I'm going to go see if Sophie needs any help with the dishes or anything. You keep working on the puzzle. If we're going to get this done tonight, we can't all slack off."

“I’ll work hard,” Bee assured him with mock-seriousness. “By the time you get back, I’ll have finished this whole moon. You’ll see.”

"Do me proud, soldier," Tristan said, ruffling her hair affectionately before heading towards the kitchen.

The living room and kitchen were technically the same room, but the L-shaped layout meant the kitchen was tucked around a corner, out of sight. The sink was already piled high with dishes, so Tristan put the plug in and rolled up his sleeves, ready to tackle the task at hand.

“Hey!” Sophie scolded when she turned around from stirring a pot and caught him in the act. “I thought I put you on puzzle duty.”

“I felt bad sitting around while you were doing all the hard work,” Tristan said. “Don’t worry, I won’t mess with the food.”

Sophie sighed, shaking her head. "Okay, but if Alice asks, I tried to stop you. She's already pretty on the fence about me cooking because she's supposed to be the one looking after me, but I'm fourteen! Fourteen-year-olds can cook. That's normal, right?"

Tristan shrugged. “I have zero concept of normality.”

"It's totally normal," Sophie insisted. "Cooking isn't even hard. You just look up what to do on the internet. Sure, sometimes you have to improvise a little because you don't have white wine for the ham and pea pasta recipe, but if you throw some extra cheese and butter in there, nobody will care."

“Sounds great. Cooking’s a useful skill to have, too.”

“That’s what I said! I’m not being neglected. I’m developing life skills! Suddenly having a good parent when you’re a teenager when you never have before is so funny.”

Tristan placed a clean glass on the drying rack and paused in his dish washing. “Is it hard? Just… suddenly having that? A whole different kind of life?”

“Nah, it’s easy. Too easy. Sometimes I’ll get this feeling like I’ve left the oven on. Just this sudden overwhelming feeling that I’ve forgotten to do something I’m supposed to. It’s crazy how easy life can be.”

"Mm," was Tristan's only response. He sort of understood what she meant. Not having his dad breathing down his neck these last couple of days had been an enormous weight off his back, but the concept of an easy life was still foreign to him. He wasn't even sure he wanted an easy life. Just… one where he felt like he had a fighting chance.

By the time Tristan had finished with the dishes, the meal had finished cooking, and Sophie was calling Alice to come and eat. Tristan didn't really know how they did things, so he hung back as they served the food and then followed them into the living room where they all sat down to eat.

In his dad's house, they had a dining room table that barely fit in their tiny apartment. His dad would make them sit at it and eat their food in silence every day. Sometimes Tristan wondered how his dad would live his life once he and his brother were out of the house. How much of all that shit did his dad actually care about or truly feel was valuable, and how much was it just some weird part of the power games he liked to play? Tristan had learned young to mask his feelings towards the food his dad served him because his dad always seemed to stop making things they liked and make the stuff they hated more often. Maybe once Tristan's dad was on his own, he'd just sit down in front of the TV with an instant meal and finally just live his life.

"So, Trist," Alice said, breaking the silence. "Tell us something about yourself."

Sophie let out a groan. “Don’t do that to him. Everyone hates when the teacher goes around the room and makes everyone say one interesting fact about themselves. Even I hate it, and I’m an extrovert, because every interesting fact about me is terrible.”

“That’s not true! You have a lot of good qualities.”

"Name one," Sophie challenged.

“Well, uh—”

“See! You can’t!”

“You didn’t give me any time! You’re very good at cooking. That’s a fact about you that’s a good thing.”

“That’s not interesting," Sophie huffed.

"Well, you're the one who decided it had to be something interesting. I just asked him to tell us something about himself. Do you have anything you'd like to share, Trist?" Alice asked, turning her attention to him.

"Uhh…" Tristan said, somehow still feeling put on the spot despite the time Sophie had bought him. Usually being decent at drawing was his go-to innocuous fact about himself, but it wasn't feeling so innocuous these days. "I work in a bakery, and they give me an employee discount. So when they mark things down at the end of the day, I can get them for really cheap."

"Ooooh," Sophie said, her eyes lighting up. “That is a fun fact. I suddenly want to become a baker.”

“I’m not a baker. I don’t have any actual skills. I just sell the stuff.”

“I could do that. Alice wants me to wait until I’m sixteen to get a part time job so that I can focus on school and also so I don’t end up with fucked up views on child labour, though, so it’ll have to wait.”

"You tried to get a job so that you could pay rent," Alice reminded her.

“Yeah! Apparently I’m a dependent minor, not your roommate, and those are very different things. Apparently! And let me tell you, being a dependent minor is a great thing. You come home and eat a bag of corn chips that someone else paid for and watch some cartoons. And then you do some housework, maybe. Like probably not even your fair share. And then you get pocket money! It’s great.”

Alice shook her head. “The hardest part of raising you is how easy it is. She’d let me do the wrong thing by her with a smile on her face.”

“Is it really wrong to exploit children if they let you?”

“Yes! Definitely yes!”

"Hmm," Sophie said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "I'm not convinced."

Bee went to bed straight after dinner, and Tristan stayed up with Sophie, working on the puzzle until she also headed off to bed. Alice was still up watching TV as he worked to get the puzzle finished before he went to sleep. He wasn't as good at it as the girls, probably because he hadn't touched a puzzle since he was a kid.

The actual finishing of it was a little anticlimactic. Or rather, it was incomplete and always would be because it turned out there were a couple of missing pieces. That felt like a metaphor for his life, but he was too tired to figure out how exactly.

“Going to bed?” Alice asked as Tristan picked Sadie up from where she’d fallen asleep next to him on the floor.

"Oh, uh, yeah," Tristan said, shifting awkwardly. "Goodnight."

"Okay," she said, but there was something in the way she said it, the way she was looking at him, that gave him the feeling that she expected something more. "Goodnight, Trist."

“Thanks again for letting me stay here,” Tristan tried. Did he not seem grateful enough? Was that the issue? “Sorry if I was a little dramatic about it. I don’t want to cause any problems here.”

“You’re not causing any problems,” Alice assured him. “And if you were, that would be okay too. We all have problems sometimes, and we can’t always fix them on our own.”

“Yeah, I guess, but… I’m fine,” Tristan said, hoisting Sadie up to carry her over his shoulder. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Alice echoed, her eyes following him until he disappeared down the hallway.

Tristan found the camping mattress in the study and rolled it out on the floor. It wasn't the best bed, but it was better than sleeping in his car. He didn't even want to think about going back to that right now. It wasn't even the discomfort of it that bothered him. He didn't care about that. It was just the feeling of isolation. But when had he ever not been alone, really? It had been so long since he'd felt cared about that he wasn't even sure he ever really had been. But then why did he feel this ache, like it was something he missed? Maybe it was just a kind of grief, a realisation of everything he'd missed out on as an unloved child that had only been made more apparent after being surrounded by a family who had so much of it for one another.

These were the thoughts that swirled in his mind as he drifted off to sleep, Sadie snoring softly beside him.