“Look at you,” she said. “Look how small you are now.”

“Get out.”

“Give me the pill.”

“You’re not supposed to go cold turkey. Did you know that?” “Your daughter’s here,” Emily said. “You want her to see you like this? I can call her down right now.”

“You’re lying.”

Emily turned her head toward the door. “Martha!” There was nothing for a second, but then they heard footsteps coming down.

“Jesus Christ,” said Hazel, hanging her head. “It’s my birthday. This is what you do to me on my birthday?”

“For you,” said Emily. “Not to you. Now give me that pill.”

“Can I come in?” Martha was standing just inside the apartment. “Mum?”

Emily took a step toward Hazel, a careful step, like she was approaching a mad dog, and she put her hand out. “You’re an addict, Hazel. Now give me that pill.”

She turned her fist over into her mother’s hand and opened it. The pill fell out silently into Emily’s palm. Emily looked at it and then, to Hazel’s surprise, her mother popped it into her mouth. “What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s a Tylenol,” said Emily. “After all this nonsense, I need one. Now go say hello to your daughter.”

But Martha had crept slowly into the room and she was already standing in the doorway. “Mum?”

“Sweetie,” said Hazel, going to take her child in her arms. She tried to ignore the nausea roiling inside her. “What a wonderful surprise.”

She did her best to behave. Glynnis had made duck breast with a tart raspberry sauce that made Hazel’s stomach flip when she smelled it, but once she started eating, her gut settled down. It was, frankly, one of the most delicious things she’d ever eaten. And Andrew made a serious toast, one without a single euphemism in it, wishing her a year of renewal and happiness, a year of closeness with those she loved, and success in her work, and the entire time, Glynnis had sat beside her new husband with her glass raised, beaming at Hazel. Was she happy because she knew with Hazel back to work she’d be out of her house soon, the devil in her basement? Or was she – this strange, strange woman – genuinely happy to see Hazel up and about, despite the fact that only six days ago, she’d caught her husband feeding her spare ribs in the bath? Nothing had ever come of that, Emily had been right, no angry words, no delayed consequences. It really had been, in Glynnis’s eyes, an instance of her husband “caring for another human being.” It wasn’t right. It should have blown up in all their faces. Is that what Hazel had wanted? Maybe. But in that, she had failed as well.

Martha sent her mother shy looks of love and sadness from the other side of the table. They hadn’t seen each other since February, when Hazel had felt well enough to go down to Toronto for an afternoon and they’d had coffee. Their meetings didn’t always end well. The undercurrent of Hazel’s worries about the girl infected a lot of what she said, and Martha heard her mother’s criticisms of her life in everything. Hazel could not offer to pay for Martha’s lattes anymore when they met because such a gesture – no matter how natural it might have been for a mother to buy her daughter a cup of coffee – Martha saw as a judgment on her joblessness, her failure to choose a path and stay on it, her eternal singleness, her at-least-once-yearly need to be bailed out of some mess. All of this in a three-dollar cup of coffee. When Martha had been in her late twenties, Hazel and Andrew had talked about it all as a phase – she was young; she would find her way; this generation started everything later; she’d be sorted out by the time she was thirty. Then, after the breakup, Hazel excused her daughter’s rootlessness as a reaction to what was happening to her parents. But now she was thirty-three, and there was no sign of her waking up. What was going to happen? Would she find someone to share her life with, who would shoulder part of the burden that loving this girl entailed? What if she or Andrew died? What if Martha became dependent on her sister? Would she ever be able to stop worrying about this child?

And yet, here she was, her thin white skin shimmering in front of the candles (although not the special candles), and that wan, loving smile on her face. How could she not want to save her, this gorgeous, lost child? Hazel reached across the tabletop and took one of Martha’s hands in hers. “This is the best birthday present I’ve gotten so far.” She was, perhaps, now a little drunk on wine and whiskey, but Martha still smiled broadly at her and accepted the compliment. “Thank you for coming.”

“Happy birthday, Mum.”

“Another toast,” said Andrew, standing. They all raised their glasses again. “To family,” he said, and again, Glynnis was beaming that bright, terrifying gaze of pure joy at her. But she drank and the clocks struck ten and she was drunk.

They shooed her out of the kitchen with a cup of camomile tea, and Martha beckoned her into the sitting room, near the door. “Your birthday’s not over yet,” she said. They went down the hallway together and Hazel saw the glass table in the front room was mounded with a small pile of gifts. They sat down together on the couch. “Mine first,” said Martha, passing Hazel a limp, wrapped package. She hefted it in her hands; it was a blouse or a blanket or something like that. “It’s a hat,” said Hazel.

“So close.”

She unwrapped it. It was a handmade case for a throw pillow, a needlepoint that was a painstaking copy of a photograph from Martha’s childhood, of herself at the age of three on her mother’s shoulders. It amazed Hazel and she held it in her lap, staring at it. “My god, Martha. This is beautiful, just beautiful.” She leaned across the couch and held her tightly. “You made this?”

“You didn’t know I could needlepoint, did you?” Her face was bright with joy. “Well, I just learned. And it’s not easy. I pulled that apart three times before I got it done.”

“It must have taken you months.”

“I calculated it took about two hundred hours,” said Martha. “I figure if I wanted to sell that thing and make minimum wage I’d have to charge, like, twenty-three hundred for it.”

Hazel laughed, but she was already cancelling the things she wanted to say that she knew would be translated in Martha’s head into something dark. It was hard to think straight, with the J &B in her and the wine, and the withdrawal symptoms, which had begun to make her sweat, like she was running a fever. But she had to be careful. Any comments on how much free time her daughter had, the fact that the gift had been made, not bought, anything around the idea that maybe this newfound talent was a “calling,” reference to the fact that Hazel would have to buy the pillow to put in the case herself, anything, to be sure, that wasn’t unalloyed gratitude. “Amazing,” she said. “You’re amazing.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. You surprise me.”

“In a good way?”

There it was, thought Hazel, she’d already gone through the bad door without realizing it. But she was drunk enough to shimmy back over the threshold. “If you hadn’t shown up here tonight, sweetie, this day would have had no saving graces. You’re a miracle.”

Martha hesitated, and then she allowed the compliment with a warm smile. “And you’re drunk.”

“Let’s open the rest of these impersonal, pointless gifts, shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

Martha lined them up, the smaller gifts in front, the larger ones behind. Hazel was touched to see her mother’s handwriting on one of the envelopes as well as Andrew’s. There were five more gifts in total. She reached for one of them, but then pulled her hand back, feeling a chill run up her spine. “Maybe we should wait for the others?”

“Sure,” said her daughter. They sat silently for a minute, Hazel staring at the wrapped boxes. “What was all the shouting about earlier?” said Martha quietly.