: Characters often navigate "emotional messiness," where love is layered with deep resentment or jealousy.

The months that followed were not a fairy tale. There were still fights—over the estate sale, over a box of old photographs that Sloane wanted to throw away and Elena wanted to keep, over whose turn it was to fix the leaky roof. But the fights were different now. They ended with reluctant laughter, or with one of them bringing the other a cup of tea, or with a grudging “Fine, you were right about the plumber.”