For a year our whole house had run on softened versions, on stories trimmed to fit what each person could stand to hear, and the softening had not protected anyone; it had only kept us apart, each of us alone with a different edited truth.

Sitting in that cold truck, letting a hard silence be exactly as hard as it was, we were doing the opposite of that for the first time, and it felt less like comfort than like air.

Chapter 12 — The Instruction Booklet

By the time we pulled into our gravel driveway it was almost noon, and Nana’s sedan was not yet in the yard, and I followed my father up the wooden porch steps and into the kitchen.

The house smelled strongly of green tomato plants; Nana had brought them in off the back porch, convinced the evening air had turned too cold for them.

My father went to the cluttered drawer where he kept appliance warranties and school notices and grocery coupons he never used, and he dug out the original instruction booklet that had come with my brace, and he sat down at the table, and I pulled out the chair across from him.