He paged through the book under streetlights on the way home. First paragraph: way too long. How many clauses did one man need? Last sentence: something about a Carolyn “emerging carelessly” from a car. Indeed. There was no inscription. No underlining. No marginal notes. It was petty, he knew—definitely not worthy of the midwestern rookie of the year—but it felt so fucking good to drop the book in the trash can in front of his building. He would buy her a new one if she asked for it back.

The Changed Party

I was eating a plum over the sink when my eight-year-old daughter Amanda slipped into the kitchen and started picking through the trash. She pulled out some crumpled plastic and pieces of old food, examining each item carefully before setting it on the counter. My plum dripped dark red drops into a coffee cup filled with water as I struggled toward a casual intervention.

“What are you doing there, honey?” I said.

“Checking to see if I threw anything away by accident,” Amanda said. She held up a yogurt carton and shook it deliberately over the counter, sending tiny purple splatters across the tile.

“Are you missing something?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m looking.”

The logic was just short of airtight. Amanda had woken up in the middle of the night a few times in the past month, coming into our room to tell us she was worried she’d left something behind at her day camp or at a friend’s house. Lisa or I would walk her back to her room and go through her possessions, accounting for everything of value, but it didn’t seem to settle her. This was an escalation.

“Honey, I think you need to stop now,” I said. “There’s nothing in there.”

“You don’t know,” Amanda said.

“Trust me,” I said. “I’ve been alive a lot longer than you and I’ve never thrown away anything by accident.”

I threw my plum pit in the bin for emphasis and brushed the trash she’d put on the counter in too. Amanda watched accusingly and picked at the back of her scalp.

“Why don’t you go find Patrick and I’ll take you guys to the arcade?” I said. It was raining again and we’d already seen two loud, terrible movies.

“Fine,” she said, and slumped out of the kitchen.