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The day Mara’s father died, she fixed the kitchen drawer. It had been sticking for years. He used to yank it open with both hands, swear at it, then insist there was nothing wrong with the runners. Now she knelt on the linoleum with his screwdriver between her teeth. Her sister stood in the doorway. “You don’t have to do that right now.” Mara removed the screwdriver. “It’s broken.” “I know.” “So I’m fixing it.” Her sister stayed there a moment, holding two untouched cups of tea. Then she left. People arrived with casseroles and careful voices. Mara took their coats. She found extra chairs. When someone began crying, she passed them the tissue box before they had to ask. “You’re being so strong,” her aunt told her. Mara shrugged. “Somebody has to sort things out.” By evening, everyone had gone except her sister, asleep on the couch beneath their father’s terrible orange blanket. Mara washed the mugs, dried them, and put them away. The drawer slid shut perfectly. She opened it again. Inside were rubber bands, dead batteries, takeaway menus from places that had closed. She sorted them into piles. Useful. Rubbish. Useful. Rubbish. At the back lay a folded scrap of paper. Her name was written on it in her father’s cramped capitals. MARA— BACK TYRE LOOKS LOW. PUMP’S IN THE SHED. DAD She read it twice. Then she went outside. Her car sat under the streetlamp. She crouched beside the back wheel and pressed her thumb into the rubber, though she had no idea what that was supposed to tell her. The shed door stuck. She pulled harder. Behind her, the house door opened. “Mara?” “Go back to sleep.” “What are you doing?” “Tyre’s low.” Her sister came down the steps, barefoot. “It can wait.” “He said the pump’s in here.” “All right.” “But he’s moved everything.” Mara shoved a flowerpot aside. “He never puts anything where it belongs.” Her sister said nothing. “And half this stuff is rubbish.” “I know.” Mara found the pump hanging from a nail beside the door. She took it down, caught the hose on a shovel, and pulled. The shovel fell with a crash. “Oh, for—” She stopped. Her sister bent to pick it up. “Leave it,” Mara said, but the words came out thin. So her sister left it. She stood beside her in the cold shed, waiting. Mara held the pump against her chest. “He checked my tyres,” she said. Her sister nodded. “Every time I came over. He’d walk me out and pretend he was looking at the garden, but he was checking them.” “I know.” Mara’s face twisted. She turned away quickly, as if there might still be something on a shelf that needed finding. Her sister put a hand on her back. For a moment, Mara stood stiff beneath it. Then she set down the pump.