“You and your flour and your little pets and your twenty-year-old starter.

All of it.

Right here in my kitchen, where I can see it.

No more shut doors.”

An hour later, the four of us carried every last bag of grain back down the stairs and out to the car, laughing about it now, Theodore doing an exaggerated impression of my grim detective’s point at the top of the stairs until even I had to admit it was funny.

And by that afternoon, when they had finally, actually gone home, Zachary and I sat together at the kitchen counter in the quiet house, tearing warm pieces off the loaf of banana bread with our fingers, and it was, without any competition, the best thing I have ever eaten.