Then she asked whether eight times six was forty-eight, as though we had finished discussing something ordinary.

“Yes,” I said.

She wrote it down.

I sat quietly for a moment before returning to the mail.

I had spent much of that year waiting for serious conversations to arrive in a form I could prepare for.

Lily usually brought them between a question about homework and a complaint about supper.

I learned to put down what I was doing.

She had support beyond those kitchen conversations.