“We can’t keep living inside the accident.”

I had thought there must be a sentence precise enough to make her hear me.

Standing beside that restaurant, I began to understand that precision was not the missing part.

I went home.

Margaret was waiting on the porch with a casserole covered in a faded towel.

“The one Ethan liked,” she said.

“With the cracker topping.”

She did not ask me to defend my tears or explain why an ordinary lunch had left me shaking.