Chapter 2

Amelia swept the shards into a pile against the toe of the pantry broom. She worked slowly, carefully, the way she had learned to do things in this house — the way you bent at the knees instead of the waist, the way you held the dustpan against the floor so the little pieces didn’t scatter again, the way you did not look up at the woman standing at the island watching you.

The wet food had spread. The mashed potatoes had smeared across two tiles, and the peas had rolled under the chair legs, and one blue-rimmed shard had made it all the way to the baseboard near the hallway. Amelia swept it in, and the scrape of the bristles against the marble was the only sound in the kitchen.

Theo had not sat back down. He stood at the end of the table, his hands in his pockets, his faded blue flannel hanging open over the white tee. He watched the girl sweep and he watched his mother stand at the island and he did not say anything else, because Theo had learned the same lesson Amelia was learning now: words cost more than silence.

Brenda watched the sweep for a moment longer, then turned her back and walked to the sink. She ran the water, hot, and she washed her hands with the soap that lived in the pump bottle by the faucet, and she dried them on the towel that hung from the oven handle. The whole ritual took a minute, and in that minute Amelia swept the last of the shards into the dustpan and carried the mess to the trash can under the sink and dumped it.

She stood there for a moment, holding the dustpan, looking at the ceramic pieces in the bag. The blue painted rim. The white glaze. The bowl her father had bought at a farmers market three summers ago, the one with the blue rim, the one he always used for her dinner because it was, he said, “the good bowl.”

The bowl was in the trash now. The rabbit was on the floor by the doorway. The chair was empty. There were peas on her plate, and she was not going to eat them, and Brenda was not going to let her leave the table until she did.

“Back to your seat,” Brenda said, without turning from the sink.

Amelia put the dustpan back on its hook and carried the broom to the pantry. She hung it where it belonged, and she stood in the pantry for a half second, in the dark, and she thought about the side door, and she thought about the window above the sink, and she thought about the street outside that she didn’t know the name of.

Then she came back out, walked past the empty chair at the head of the table, and sat down in her seat. The peas were cold now. The roast had congealed into a gray-red crust. She picked up her fork and she pushed a pea to the side of the plate, and she did not lift the fork to her mouth.