When she was young, when Enid's mother had browned the ribs in the kitchen and Gary and Chip had brought home their unbelievably beautiful girlfriends and everybody's idea of a good time was to buy Denise a lot of presents, this had been the longest afternoon of the year. An obscure natural law had forbidden whole-family gatherings before nightfall; people had scattered to wait in separate rooms. Sometimes, as a teenager, Chip had taken mercy on the last child in the house and played chess or Monopoly with her. When she got a little older, he'd brought her along to the mall with his girlfriend of the moment. There was no greater bliss for her at ten and twelve than to be so included: to take instruction from Chip in the evils of late capitalism, to gather couturial data on the girlfriend, to study the length of the girlfriend's bangs and the height of her heels, to be left alone for an hour at the bookstore, and then to look back, from the top of the hill above the mall, on the silent slow choreography of traffic in the faltering light.