But Katy’s tom-tom thuds abated. Static abated. Bright chill days on the beach; cold nights, the coldest black spread thickly with stars. Nora would make hot chocolate and read at the table while Sara and Delia finished homework and drew, or layered blankets on the sofa and watched movies. The girls now traveled from room to room without hesitation, the house more fully theirs. Though a house that appeared more ragged: Nora repaired the roof and managed a loan for a new furnace, but the siding was badly worn, one of the outer banisters split (for a time held together by white polyester rope from the marina). Inside along the carpeted stairs and upper hall, a flattened gray path darkened; accumulated coffee and ice-cream stains wore into the sofa fabric. The dingy walls she could repaint on weekends when the girls visited James. More window quilts, in blue and white; the framed black-and-white baby photos still on the kitchen wall above the side windows. Weekday evenings, while the girls slept, she’d use the big oak table to do Ben Sundlun’s accounts.
