Danny told me our mother had called him and asked whether I had told him to take sides, and that he had answered that he was not taking sides, he was looking at dates, which had become, I was glad to hear, his sentence too.

These were not the conversations of a healed family.

They were the conversations of people learning to stand in the accurate version of things, which is bumpier and less satisfying than the comfortable version and has the single enormous advantage of being true.

And then I saw the thing I will remember longest.

Lily, mid-run, stopped at the edge of the yard and looked toward the driveway, the old reflex, the checking I had watched her do all through her own birthday.

She stood there only a second.