Now Linny noticed again the sad bagginess of Van's pants and how they seemed to weigh her down. Stand up straight, she wished she could say, the way their mother used to command them... Linny noticed, too, that Van was wearing rings again, gleaming above the jade bracelet. The jade bothered Linny, as if Van were somehow trying to arm herself with jewelry. Did she know about that woman in Chicago, that Grace? How could Linny ever bring it up? They didn't talk the way true sisters did; their conversations barely ventured above the mundane, the argumentative. They had gone from sharing a sofa bed, clothes, toys, a whole imagined universe, to where they were now, with such swiftness that Linny couldn't track how they had changed.