Chapter 12 — What Nora Found

My daughter is seven and she reads the way I read at seven, which is to say indiscriminately and without permission.

Nora reads cereal boxes, road signs, other people’s mail, the backs of my file folders when she thinks I’m not looking. Her twin, Theo, has never voluntarily read anything and can identify forty-one aircraft by silhouette, which is its own kind of literacy.

The Senate confirmation was carried on C-SPAN and picked up by two networks for about ninety seconds. My name was on television. My name is not a common name.

Nora used a school library computer.

She came home on a Thursday, put her backpack down, ate half an apple, and said, “Mom, who is Daniel Thorne?”

I had spent seven years preparing for many things. I want to be honest that I had not prepared for a Thursday.