Tuesday was rice night in our house. One pack of chicken thighs, a handful of carrots, half an onion. I had it timed. Sliced the carrots a certain thickness, cooked the rice to a specific volume, portioned the chicken so that dinner fed three people and tomorrow’s lunch was already in the plan. Every Tuesday I did this math without thinking, the way you do math that you’ve run so many times it’s no longer math but instinct.
I was running that math when my daughter Sam burst through the back door with someone I had never seen before.
“She looks like she hasn’t slept.”
“I know. I’ll talk to her. Gently.”
Over the weekend I tried to find out more from Sam.
