Just before Thanksgiving, Helen’s doctor had decided to try another new medicine because she still wasn’t feeling better. Thomas’s father had explained to him that it was always hard for Helen when they switched her medication—her body needed time to adjust while they waited for the new medicine to take effect.

It had only been a few days, but as Thomas studied his mother as they ate dinner, he couldn’t help but wish that the medicine would hurry up. The clouds were still in her eyes.

When they were finished, Helen said, “Brian, you go back downstairs to work. We’ll clean up.”

“You sure?”

“I can still wash dishes.”

Helen pushed herself up from the kitchen table and went over to the sink. The water gurgled. Mr. Moran squeezed Thomas’s arm as Thomas stood and placed the silverware on his plate. When he looked up, his father was gone.

Thomas hurried back and forth, and soon the plates were rinsed and put into the dishwasher. Helen began filling the sink for the pots, pans, and glasses they washed by hand. When the bubbles threatened to spill over, Thomas reached around his mother and turned off the tap.

“Should I wash?” he asked.

Helen shook her head, leaning so far over the sink that the tips of her hair brushed the top of the foamy water. She didn’t want Thomas to see the tears that slid from the corners of her eyes down her face. They didn’t seem like real tears to Thomas, but more like a leak, like water seeping out of a crack. “Rivulet.” That was the word.

Pressing the backs of her hands to her eye sockets, Helen said: “Hand the dishes to me. I’ll wash and you can dry.”

Thomas handed a casserole dish to his mother, who took it in her hands and dipped it into the soapy water. Even though the water was steaming, she held the dish below the surface.

Thomas didn’t know what she was waiting for. He busied himself as long as he could, returning the salt and pepper shakers to their tray on the counter, sweeping the crumbs around the breadbasket into his hand, setting the butter dish in the refrigerator door.

“Are you okay?” Thomas could see a trail on the side of her face, but the rivulet had stopped. Helen just nodded and swiped at the casserole dish with her sponge before rinsing it off and handing it to Thomas. Dripping.

Grabbing the towel from the handle of the fridge, Thomas dried it. By the time he had placed it on the counter, Helen was holding out his father’s water glass. More water dripped onto the floor. Thomas chose to ignore it. He’d wipe it up after they’d finished.

Just as his fingers touched the glass, Helen let go and it slipped out of his grasp to the floor and broke.

“Thomas!” Helen scolded.

He knelt to the ground to pick up the pieces.

“Get back! You’re in your stocking feet. Sit on the kitchen chair.”

Helen moved as if she would put Thomas on the chair herself, but her slippered foot found the puddle and she too fell to the floor—taking the same path as the glass had—before he could move to help her.

Thomas saw that blood ran down her arm. It was more than a rivulet. She stayed sitting where she was and gazed at it the way she did at a ladybug crawling on her finger.

Thomas ran to get his father.

Mr. Moran didn’t ask questions. He led the way back up the stairs, yanking the whole roll off the paper towel dispenser when he reached the kitchen. “You need to hold your arm high,” he said, crouching down next to Helen. “Oh my God, this is deep. Thomas, go get the first aid kit.”

Thomas ran upstairs, but the white plastic box was not under the sink in his parents’ bathroom.

“Can’t find it!” he screamed from the top of the stairs.

“Come back here, Thomas. Deep breaths…Okay, listen closely. I need you to run next door and ask Ms. Dover if she has gauze, and—” Thomas’s father couldn’t crouch any longer. He stood, still holding up Helen’s arm. “Try to help me, Helen. You have to keep your arm above your heart. Butterfly bandages, Thomas. See if she has any. Go!”

“It’s not his fault,” Helen said as Thomas struggled with the deadbolt. “The glass slipped out of my hand.”

Thomas freed the lock, flung open the door, and ran. Down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. Through the curtain of bushes that separated the Dovers’ house from the street. Throwing himself at their door, he smacked it with the flat of his hand and then rang the doorbell, pressing down as hard as he could.

With his ear to the door he heard music. Loud pulsing music.

“Keep your pantalons on!” Giselle threw open the door, her face flushed, wearing strings of flower leis around her neck. “Thomas!” she cried, pulling him in and tossing a string of flowers around his neck as well. “Come join our dance party.” Frenchy stood on his hind legs pawing the air as if he, too, wanted Thomas to dance.

Pulling his hand away, Thomas shook free and ran toward the source of the music. In the middle of the living room, Giselle’s mother was jumping on a mini-trampoline. “You have to give this a go, Thomas,” she shouted. “It’s very stimulating to the adrenals.”

Thomas searched for the stereo. He found the remote and hit the red power button.

Giselle’s mother bounced off the trampoline. “Thomas, sweet, what is it?”

“My mother’s cut herself, Ms. Dover! My father needs some gauze and a butterfly bandage. She was handing me a glass to dry, but it slipped.”

Crossing the room, Ms. Dover paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I’ll get my first aid kit. You should call me Nadine, Thomas. I’d prefer it.”

As Ms. Dover ran upstairs, Giselle lifted the lei from Thomas’s neck and dropped it and her own to the floor. She put her arms around Thomas. “You’re shivering,” she said quietly.

Breaking away to get her jacket, Giselle threw it over Thomas’s shoulders and put her arm around him as they walked back to the Morans’ house.

Ms. Dover rushed past them on the sidewalk. When Thomas and Giselle arrived, she was squatting next to Helen at the kitchen table, pressing gauze to her hand and wrapping it with more. Mr. Moran made a slow circle around them with the broom, looking for stray pieces of glass.

“Now it looks like you’ve got a paw,” Ms. Dover said, lifting Helen’s chin with her finger. “Helen? Are you okay?” As soon as she removed her finger, Helen’s chin dropped back down. Thomas noticed the tears leaking again.

Ms. Dover stood. “Brian, this will need stitches. It will reopen, especially on her palm. I—”

“Thomas,” his father instructed. “Why don’t you take Giselle upstairs and show her your sketchbook?”

“I know a good urgent care facility,” Ms. Dover continued. “I think it’s still open.”

Thomas led the way upstairs. He pulled out the chair to his desk and opened his sketchbook. Giselle sat down. Thomas had never seen her so quiet. He left her in his room to take his place by the cold air register.

“Helen, what have they got you on?” When his mother didn’t answer, Ms. Dover repeated her question to his father.

“None of the new drugs have worked. Helen’s depression has been so treatment resistant that Dr. Beecher is trying one of the old tricyclics. As you know, it always takes a while to—”

“But was she clear of her other meds? What about her diet? You have to be careful with interactions. Even citrus can—”

“Helen is getting very good care, Nadine.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks for your help. We’re fine now.”

“You know, Brian. There’s a difference between people pitying you and people feeling compassion for your struggle. You don’t have to shut everyone out. Thomas—”

“I wouldn’t have sent Thomas over, but he couldn’t find our first aid kit. It’s just a cut.”

“Why don’t you let me stay here while you take Helen?”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll call Helen’s sister. Really, Nadine. We’re fine. I’m sorry we interrupted your evening.”

Thomas returned to his bedroom, where Giselle was still paging through his sketchbook.

“Why only butterflies?” she asked.

Thomas shrugged. He didn’t know why.

“Giselle,” Ms. Dover called up the stairs. “We need to go now.”

Giselle took hold of Thomas’s shoulders. “This is how the French do it.” She pulled Thomas close. “Both good-bye and hello are the same. You lean in…” Giselle pressed her cheek to his. “Always offer your right cheek,” she continued. “And you don’t actually kiss, you kiss the air.” Thomas heard the sound of Giselle’s lips smacking next to his ear.

“Now the other side.” More smacking. “Tonight, I say, ‘À bientôt, mon ami,’ which means ‘See you soon, my friend.’ Have you got it?”

Thomas nodded.

“Thomas?” Giselle leaned in, pressing her forehead to Thomas’s, pressing her nose to his nose. “Will you draw one for me? A butterfly.”

“Okay.”

“A butterfly that looks like…what I would look like if I were a butterfly?”

“Okay.”

After Aunt Sadie had tucked him in, Thomas lay in the dark thinking about the Dovers and how Giselle had been dancing on a weekday night to loud music with flowers around her neck while her mother bounced on a trampoline in their living room.

When he saw Aunt Sadie again, he would ask her—was that normal, too?