“It’s quieter,” Maya said, from the end of the table.

“It’s really quiet.”

“It is,” her mother said.

“And you are not sitting in it after Friday.”

And I stood in that kitchen with my hands over my mouth, because I had seen it.

I had seen the gap with my own two eyes, from four feet away, and I had thought she’ll grow into it, and I had said nothing at all.

Part Thirty: Fifteen and a Half Inches