I remember the fruit salad bowl finally slipping out of my hands. I remember the sound it made
when it hit the wooden deck. It didn’t break. It just bounced and rolled, and grapes and melon and strawberries spilled out everywhere, and a strawberry rolled all the way down the steps and into the grass.
I remember my mother saying, “Oh, Rachel.” Not angry. Just broken. Like something she’d been holding for thirty years had finally fallen out of her hands too.
I remember my father walking across the yard. My quiet father, who builds birdhouses and never
says anything. He walked straight to the swing set. He picked up Ben in one arm and held out his other hand to Sophie. Sophie took it. And my father walked my children around the side of the house, toward the driveway, away from all of it, without saying a word.
