And I do not think it was the best thing I have ever eaten only because it was good bread, though it was very good bread, dense and faintly sour and rich in a way that ordinary supermarket loaves never are.

I think it tasted the way it did because of everything that was dissolved into it: the relief, the forgiveness, the enormous gladness of having been so wrong about someone I loved.

There is a particular sweetness to food that arrives on the far side of a reconciliation, food made by hands you very nearly wronged, and that banana bread was soaked in it.

Every bite tasted like an apology accepted before it was even fully offered, like a door thrown open, like the specific joy of discovering that the person you feared was hiding something terrible had in fact been hiding something wonderful all along.