The door opened before either of us could decide what on earth to do, and Jacqueline’s warm voice floated up the stairs, utterly cheerful, utterly unsuspecting.

“Sweetheart, we were only halfway down the road with this bread anyway!” she called out from the entryway.

“We wanted to drop off a little thank-you gift, and then Zachary called and said you were upset, so we turned right around.

Is everything all right?”

And then she came up the stairs, and I saw that she was carrying, balanced carefully on her palm, a clear plastic container of fresh homemade banana bread, its top still faintly fogged with warmth.

That detail is burned into my memory, the tender absurdity of it, my mother-in-law climbing the stairs toward what I believed was the scene of her exposed criminal enterprise, holding a loaf of banana bread she had baked us as a thank-you.