Sera was already in the kitchen, barefoot, hair scraped back into its ponytail, measuring kernels into the heavy-bottomed pot like she did everything—efficiently, with both hands. The oil went in. The lid went on. She shook the pot once against the burner and set it down, and the first kernel popped somewhere under the steel like a knuckle cracking.

Vivienne stood at the counter with a glass of water she hadn't drunk from, watching her stepdaughter's shoulders move, and thought: she doesn't know. She looked at me on that couch and she doesn't know. The relief of it was so large it felt like nausea. Or maybe that was the other thing—the strip at her nape, still tender from the clippers, the bare skin there that no one in this house could see but her. She'd pinned her hair low and loose to cover it. She'd checked twice in the hall mirror. She'd check again.

"You want butter or you want the powdered stuff?" Sera asked, not turning around.

"Butter."

"Nate wants the powdered stuff."

"Then do both. He's not a child, he can—"

"It's one pot, Viv." Sera glanced back over her shoulder, and her green eyes did that thing they did—skated over Vivienne's face and landed, briefly, on the cheekbone. The bruise had gone the color of weak tea, but it was still there, still visible under the foundation if you knew where to look. Sera knew where to look. She always did. "You okay? You've been weird all afternoon."

"I'm fine."

The popcorn rattled against the lid, a fast dry drumroll, and Sera turned back to it, and that was when Nate came in behind Vivienne. She felt him before she heard him—the shift in the air at her back, the particular warmth of a body close enough to feel and not close enough to touch. He didn't touch. He never touched her in front of Sera. He just stood there, at the counter, between her and the doorway, and reached past her for the salt like she was furniture, his forearm grazing her hip on the way, and she went very still with her glass of water and her face turned to the window over the sink.

"Tonight," he said, low, barely moving his lips, pitched for her ear and no one else's, "you're perfect."

The pot rattled. Sera hummed something under her breath. Vivienne watched the dark backyard through the glass and felt her pulse in her throat.

"You smile. You laugh at the movie. You don't flinch when I touch you." He set the salt down. His voice didn't change at all—same flat, patient register he used to ask for the remote. "You flinch, I'll make you pay for it later. You understand me?"

"Yes," she said. It came out level. She was proud of that, and hated that she was proud of it.

His hand came up and found the nape of her neck—found the shaved strip under the loose hair, exactly where it was, like he'd mapped it—and his thumb moved once across the bare skin, back and forth, slow, the way you'd rub a thumb across the spine of a book you were about to open. She didn't flinch. She stood there with the glass sweating in her hand and let him do it, and the popcorn popped, and Sera turned around with the bowl and said, "Okay, both, don't say I never—" and Nate's hand was already gone, already reaching for the bowl, already the good son again, easy as a light switching off.

They settled onto the couch with the bowl between them, Sera in the middle at first, then up on her feet to fuss with the blinds, then down again on Nate's other side with her legs tucked under her, and the room went dark when she killed the lamp, and the TV threw its blue flicker across all three of them. Vivienne sat at the far end with her spine straight and her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the screen, which was showing a helicopter over water, which was showing nothing, which was showing a plot she would not be able to describe afterward if someone asked her.

Nate's hand landed on her thigh.

Not on the skirt. On the skin below it, where the black mini skirt had ridden up when she sat—bare thigh, warm from the cushion, and his palm flat over it, heavy, casual, like a man resting his hand on an armrest. Sera was talking about the internship, about the gallery, about a girl named Priya who was already angling for the same desk, and her voice ran on over the helicopter noise, and Vivienne stared at the screen and felt his thumb begin to trace small circles, higher, slow, the silk of the skirt sliding up under the heel of his hand a quarter inch at a time.

She didn't move. She kept her face still. She kept her breathing even, and she kept her eyes on the flickering water, and somewhere under the flat gray of her own obedience something in her chest was standing with its fists clenched, screaming, he is doing this in front of her, in front of his sister, in this house, and you are letting him, you are sitting here and letting him —and her body sat there anyway, thigh soft under his hand, the circles going higher, and Sera laughed at something on the screen, and Vivienne laughed too.

The screen went black.

Not the slow fade of a scene change—a hard cut, the helicopter gone, the whole room dropping into a darkness so complete that for a second Vivienne couldn't tell if her eyes were open. The refrigerator in the kitchen stopped its hum. The clock on the microwave died mid-number. Somewhere down the block a dog started barking, and then another dog answered it, and then the whole neighborhood was dogs, and Sera said, "You've got to be kidding me," into the dark.

Nate's hand was still on her thigh. It hadn't moved, hadn't tightened—just lay there, palm flat and heavy on the bare skin below her skirt, and in the blackness it felt enormous, the whole world narrowed to that one warm weight and the slow drag of his thumb. Vivienne sat absolutely still. If Sera looked over now, if her eyes adjusted, if the moon through the blinds caught anything—but Sera was already up, feeling her way across the room with both hands out, knocking her shin on the coffee table and swearing.

"Power's out for the whole street," she said. "I can see Mrs. Delgado's porch light's off too. Great. Great." A pause, a sigh. "I'm not sitting here in the dark waiting for it to come back. I'm going up. I've got that thing at the gallery at nine."

"Night, Sera," Nate said. Easy. Bored, even. His thumb moved one slow half-circle on Vivienne's thigh, and she felt it all the way up into her teeth.

"Night." Sera's footsteps crossed the floorboards, and at the bottom of the stairs she stopped. "Viv? You coming?"

"In a minute." Her voice came out smooth. She didn't know how. "I'll lock up."

"'Kay." And then she was gone, up the stairs, her door clicking shut a moment later, and the house was dark and quiet and the two of them were alone on the couch with the dead television and the dogs barking outside.

Nate's hand slid up. All the way up, under the hem of the mini skirt, fingers spread across the front of her thigh where it met her hip, and she heard her own breath catch in the dark before she could stop it.

"Good girl tonight," he said. "You didn't flinch once."

"There was nothing to flinch at." She said it to the dark, to the ceiling, anywhere but toward the sound of his voice. "You kept your hands where Sera could see them."

"I kept my hands where I wanted them." His fingers flexed once, and let go, and the loss of the weight was somehow worse than the weight had been. "Get to bed. You've got tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." She stood up too fast and had to steady herself on the arm of the couch. "What's tomorrow?"

"Sleep well." He was smiling—she couldn't see it, but she could hear it, that flat pleased register he used when he'd gotten exactly what he came for. "And if you get bored up there, alone in that big bed, think about my cock. It'll help you sleep."

She made a sound in her throat—disgust, mostly, the sigh of it, the long exhale of a woman who has run out of ways to say you're revolting and has settled on breathing it instead. She turned toward the stairs. Her heel found the first step, and she was already thinking about her door, about the lock, about whether he'd come up behind her—

The slap landed across her ass with a crack that filled the dark hallway, hard enough to lift her onto her toes, hard enough that the sound of it bounced off the walls and up the stairwell. She grabbed the banister. Her whole body went rigid, the sting blooming out from the center of her in a hot ring, and she bit down on the inside of her lip so hard she tasted copper.

"Who's in charge?" he said, from behind her, close, his voice still pleasant, still unhurried.

She stood on the step with her hand white on the banister and the pain radiating through the thin silk of the skirt, and she thought about the draft on his phone, and about the door she'd locked from the outside, and about how many days until Thursday.

"You are," she said.

"Say it properly."

"You're in charge." Her jaw barely moved. "Nate."

"There she is." He stepped back. She heard him, felt the air change, and then his footsteps went the other way—toward the stairs on the far side, toward his own room, unhurried, whistling something low through his teeth. His door opened. His door closed.

Vivienne climbed the rest of the way in the dark, one hand on the rail, and stood outside her bedroom door for a long moment with her palm flat on the wood and her eyes shut, feeling the sting settle into a dull heat under her skirt, the shaved strip at her nape cold where the loose hair had shifted, and the house silent around her except for the dogs, still barking, somewhere down the block.