Caden flicked disconsolately among channels. It pained him to know there were people in the world who thought him imperfect. I’d taken him for an adult because he earned a lot of money, but he was like me. Critique gave him heartburn. Credit checks, tax returns, medicals, appraisal in any form. In giving the grown-ups the slip, we’d created a power vacuum. In the afternoons, we went back to bed, as if we lived in a Latin country rather than a chill Presbyterian port. And in the mornings, I woke up feeling guilty. We consumed endless trashy television, with special account given to the lower-tier reality shows, where teak-colored men in peg trousers buttonholed interchangeable women for stilted “chats.” ITV2 was a Möbius strip of mindless content. Cousins of the TOWIE cast, people affiliated with the Kardashians, spinoffs of spinoffs.