It is almost a law of these situations that everyone involved will be acting reasonably on their own partial information, and that the sum of all those individually reasonable actions will be complete chaos.

Zachary was reasonable.

I was, in my own panicked way, reasonable.

Jacqueline, turning the car around to comfort an upset daughter-in-law, was reasonable.

And the result of all that reasonableness was me at the top of the stairs, pointing my mother-in-law toward a pile of flour like a detective in a bad film.” We stared at each other in mutual horror, and downstairs, the front door lock turned.

Chapter 17 — The Banana Bread