I loved the idea of a jumpy, mysterious world inside the normal one. But what I didn’t get was this: With all that uncertainty, a book or a tree or anything made out of atoms is always in one place and not another. So what if the particles behave in mysterious ways? In the real world, where it counts, there’s no magic or flexibility whatsoever. You don’t say my house was on Minter Place last week and this week it’s on Greenwood Circle. You don’t go downstairs in the morning and find the furniture’s been rearranged or your white count has gone back to normal.

My father’s tendency to exist seemed to increase once I started looking for him. But when I sat at my desk the next day and opened my laptop, my fingers hesitated over the keys. Chemo was starting on Monday. I was suffering from the faraway feeling that signaled I was about to be poisoned in order to be saved. Far away from Mom, far away from Cloud, far away from everyone and everything that mattered. Father, father, father, father. What on earth did that mean?

•  •  •

After church my grandparents arrived, and my mother cooked a special lunch of my choice, meat loaf with piquant sauce, as it would be a while before I could enjoy food again. These rituals gave impending chemotherapy the feel of an almost but not quite festive occasion, like Christmas without the lights or presents or fun.

As usual my mother could not settle down. She sat on the couch with her legs under her and beckoned me over to rub my back, as much for her sake as for mine. Robin shut himself in the music room. When passing me in the hallway, my grandmother laid the back of her hand on my cheek as though I was already running a temperature. Later on, when I was watching TV, Grandpa lowered himself heavily beside me. He stared at the screen for a while, jiggling his foot up and down, pretending to be fascinated by American Idol. I ignored him. Finally he leaned over and asked, in a double-agent whisper, “How’s the search going?”

Slowly I turned and gave him a wide-open stare. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with it!” I put maximum reproach in my voice, although, being a sucker for sheepish smiles, I had already started to forgive him.

He pressed a finger to his lips and continued in his hilarious whisper. “I don’t remember his last name, but I know he was a neuroscientist.”

“Brain, right?” I whispered back. “Well, I can’t find him in Georgetown alumni.”

Brows up. “He wasn’t at Georgetown. He was at GWU.”

I whooped and high-fived him, knowing he would try solemnly to shake my hand instead. He used to get the high five wrong for real; now the handshake is one of our running jokes.