“I understand,” I said, and set the receiver back in its cradle.

At eight o’clock that evening, Lucy sat at the kitchen table with a red cardboard box of colored pencils spread out on a plastic mat.

Her yellow pencil had a dull, broken tip, and she dragged it across a drawing of a little house without leaving any yellow line.

“Mommy, can you fix my pencil?” she asked.

I took a small red plastic sharpener out of the utensil drawer and held it over the open kitchen trash can as I turned the handle.

Lucy sat on her wooden chair, twisting the loose threads on her sweater sleeve while she watched thin yellow wood shavings drop into the plastic liner.