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laughed. The rest of them laughed right along with her.
    A few minutes later they pulled up in front of a small blue house. The paint was peeling, and it looked like the lawn hadn’t been mowed in a month. The front walkway was lined with flower bushes half-overgrown, half-dead.
    Liza opened the car door. “I’ll just be a minute.”
    “We’ll come up with you,” said Olivia.
    “You don’t need to do that.” Liza shook her head. “Seriously.”
    “Look,” Olivia said. “We’re not letting you deal with it alone.” And with that she got out of the car and shut the door behind her.
    Liza took a breath and then turned to face Lucy. “My mom is really messed up,” she said quickly. “So please ignore whatever batshit thing she says. I just need to make sure she is not facedown in a pool of her own vomit because her job called and she didn’t make it in today.” Lucy had never heard Liza like this before—she sounded kind of ashamed. And just the littlest bit scared.
    Lucy nodded and looked down at her lap. Gil had already told her about Liza’s mom—about how she was a Glass Heart, which meant that her heart broke all the time, andevery time it broke, it shattered. But Liza pretty much never talked about her.
    Liza opened the front door and they followed her inside the house. “Mom, I’m here,” she called out.
    There was no answer, just the sound of the TV. They walked slowly. “I brought my friends, so please do not be drunk and naked. Hello?”
    “Lizzie?” There was a quiet muffled voice coming from the bedroom. Liza pushed through the door into a dimly lit room.
    There was a chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling, five of its six bulbs burnt out. There was a stained white carpet and in the center of it a large four-poster bed covered in a tangle of twisted sheets and blankets. The floor was littered with crumpled tissues and empty Diet Coke cans.
    Liza went to the window and pulled open the curtains. “Damn, Mom,” she said. Sunlight streamed in. Sitting on the bed was a woman in her mid-forties, wearing a pink-flowered silk robe, her hair pulled back into a sloppy bun, eyes ringed in red. Even in this state, she was gorgeous. She held a phone up and pointed to a photo of herself in a liquid gold dress, fully made-up, laughing, holding on to the arm of a rather ordinary-looking man.
    “You’d think that I would have been the one to leave him,” she said. “I mean, look at us.” She sounded so, so tired. “Look at me and look at him. He was just . . . he was just this guy.” Her voice cracked on “guy.” “I begged him to stay, though.” She looked up then. “I don’t know why he didn’t.”
    “All right, Mom,” Liza said. She walked over to the bed and started straightening out the blankets and putting the fitted sheet back on the mattress with the manner of an impatient but efficient nurse. She picked up a prescription bottle off the floor, opened it, and held it over her palm. A single orange pill bounced out. “These were supposed to last you until the end of the month.”
    Liza’s mom didn’t say anything—she looked down like an ashamed child.
    Liza put the bottle on the nightstand and then started collecting up the bits of crumpled tissues, the half-crushed cans.
    “I just don’t understand why he left, Lizzie. I thought he was it for me. I was so good this time.”
    “You were with him for a week . How could you have thought it was going to be forever?” Liza faced her mother. They looked so much alike it was as though Liza was talking to herself in the future. Except, of course, Liza’s future self would never be like this.
    “I . . . ,” her mother started. “Well, I guess it sounds silly now.”
    Liza’s voice softened. “You were supposed to go to work today. Your boss called. You missed your shift.”
    “Oh, shit,” and then Liza’s mom froze. She stopped crying and raised her hand to her lips. “Can you call them and tell them I’m sick,