By six, I had a pot of salted water heating on the stove for dinner.

The kitchen walls looked dull under the overhead bulb, and the peeling yellow paint near the window was flaking off in thin strips.

Lily sat at the table with her spelling homework open, kicking the leg of her wooden chair with her left shoe.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

“Lily, please stop kicking the chair,” I said, stirring the boiling water with a wooden spoon.

“Daddy took us to the big house on Sunday,” Lily said, keeping her head down over her paper.