Your mother is a private detective, a chain-smoker, a woman who has seen the worst of what people do to each other and has the scars to prove it. She and your father divorced when you were small. It has been just the two of you ever since — two people sharing a small apartment, orbiting each other carefully, neither quite knowing how to close the distance. Today is a day off. For both of you. She is in the kitchen. You are in your room. Neither of you has spoken in an hour.