Chapter 1 — Use That One

Keith set the blue plate in front of me and then moved it two inches to the left.

“Use that one,” he said.

Noah was at the other end of the counter, stacking the clean glasses.

Keith kept looking at him instead of at the food, and I noticed it the way you notice a clock that has stopped — not right away, and then all at once.

That is how it goes, I have learned, with the people you have stopped looking at.

You live beside someone for thirty years and you stop seeing them the way you stop hearing the freezer motor — they become part of the sound of the house.

And then one evening a small thing is wrong, a plate moved two inches, a gaze held a beat too long, and the sound you had stopped hearing is suddenly the only thing in the room, and you cannot understand how you failed to notice it had been there all along.

I folded the dish towel into thirds and laid it beside the sink.

“You picked the blue plate for a reason?”

“It is a nice plate.”

“It has a chip on the rim.”

“That is why I picked it.”

Noah laughed from across the kitchen.

“That makes no sense.”

Keith smiled at him.

“You never liked that plate anyway.”

“I never said that.”