Chapter 24: Lights On

The Sunday dinner at Eleanor's that I remember best came a year and a half later, in June.

The kitchen smelled of rosemary and burned butter, and Eleanor was losing an argument with a rolling pin.

"It's supposed to be round," she said.

"It's a continent," Mara said, from the counter. "Very nice. I can see Australia."

"Nobody asked the treasurer."

"The treasurer is asked everything, Eleanor. It's in the by-laws you wrote."

I stood in the doorway with a casserole dish in both hands and watched them.

Eleanor had flour in her silver hair.

She looked ten years younger than the day I had first seen her in a hospital bed.

Her heart had been steady ever since the night in the hospital.

My institute had a brass plate on the door, forty employees, and a waiting list of postdoctoral fellows.

Mara had stopped pretending she did not love the budget meetings.

"Mommy!"

The shout came from the hall, and then a small pair of shoes pounded across the tile.

Our daughter was four years old.

She had a gap where a front tooth had been and a scab on her knee.

She hit my legs at a dead run.

"Careful, she's carrying the hot dish!" Eleanor said.

"I'm fine." I set the casserole down and picked the girl up, and she wrapped herself around me.

"Daddy says I can put the napkins out."

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