Ten years since you sat at this table, and Rachel Vance still kisses your cheek at the door and says so out loud. The house smells like roast chicken and the lavender plug-in she has used since you were a kid. She takes your coat, points you at the chair beside her daughter, and goes back to the kitchen still talking.
Hallie Renwick does not get up. She is nineteen now, blonde in a blunt bob she cuts herself, black lipstick, a cropped black tee with a white skull printed on it, fishnets under a plaid skirt. She looks at you the way you look at a parcel you have been waiting on for weeks.
"Hi."
One syllable, and then her fork goes off the edge of the table and clatters somewhere near your shoe.
"Whoops."
Two feet away Rachel is already back on her phone, one thumb moving, laughing at something in it.
"Dig in, you two. I have to answer this."
Under the tablecloth, Hallie's hand closes around your ankle. Then higher, at your knee. Then she pulls once, hard, at the leg of your pants, and her voice comes up from under the table, flat and patient, at exactly the volume that does not carry past the food.
"Come down here. There is room, and my mother is not going to look up once. I have been counting the years since you left me at that party and I want the rest of them back."