She walked in and set her bag down and stood in the hallway — the same coat hooks, the same narrow table, the photograph of her mother on the wall that had been there since she was seven years old — and felt the particular feeling of a place that holds you exactly as you are.
“I’m fine, Dad,” she said. Preemptively.
“I know,” he said. And went to put the kettle on.
Her mother had been gone for eleven years.
Grace Wilk. Warm and sharp and entirely present in the way of women who understand that presence is its own form of power. She had been Edna Calloway’s closest friend for thirty years — the kind of friendship with its own language, its own history, its own shorthand that excluded everyone else including their children.
Tovia had grown up between two households.
She had also, witho
