4. FireIt is snowing during spring break when Uncle Tomás calls. He speaks with Mom for less than a minute. She hangs up. “That was Tomás,” she announces. Usually when they talk he wants money, and usually they argue loudly. Mom is smiling. Dad and I look up from the dining room table. We’re eating breakfast.
“What was he saying?” I ask.
“Oh, nothing.” She laughs. “I have no idea why, but he always calls me when it snows.”
I am waiting to meet a professor when a message from Glory pops into my inbox. There is no subject. I open the email and read. “Hey Joe,” she begins. She has only written a few lines. Her father passed away, and she tried to make it to Connecticut from school in Pennsylvania, but he died before the bus got anywhere close. She had seen him a few days beforehand, when s
