Mary took a deep breath. How could something possibly be so heartfelt and so freaking annoying at the same time?

“Single doesn’t equal lonely, Mom.”

Naomi pressed her eyes closed in a move that was the emotional equivalent of an eye-roll, though Naomi believed eye-rolling to be juvenile and would never engage in such behavior. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, while you’re still beautiful and have all those friends of yours. But someday, Mary, single does equal lonely. What about when your father and I aren’t here anymore? What about when you’re old and frail and sick and there’s no one there for you?”

“Yes,” Mary grumbled. “Life is scary, Mom.”

“Don’t patronize me! Like you know so much more than I do. When I’m the one who watched it happen to my own sister!”

And that was Mary’s hard limit. She rose up and cleared the plates into a tall stack, then marched everything into the kitchen. She wasn’t going to be ungrateful. She’d still clean the kitchen. But the minute her mother started reducing Aunt Tiff’s life to something lonely and frail and sick was when Mary couldn’t sit at the table a second longer.

“Mary,” her mother called. “You can’t just—”

Mary heard the quiet tone of her father interrupting. She knew what she would see were she to poke her head back into the dining room. Her father would be whispering in her ear, and Naomi would be pressing her hands to her brow bones, careful not to wrinkle her skin, even while upset.

As she set the plates in the dishwasher and slid the leftovers into containers, she heard her parents leave the dining room. She knew that her father would be depositing her mother into her favorite after-dinner spot on the couch. She knew that he would press a glass of brandy into her mother’s hand and turn on an episode of Downton Abbey for her. If it had been the wintertime, he would have flicked on the gas fireplace as well.

Just a few moments later, he was there, in the kitchen with Mary and silently taking over at the sink with the pots and pans. Mary wordlessly did the rest, wiping down the countertops and brewing two cups of ginger tea for her and her father. It was something he did every night after dinner, and when Mary was there, she did as well. She knew that he’d always liked the tradition, and she liked the fact that something so small could make her father happy.

When the kitchen was set to rights, the two of them held their steaming mugs in their hands and eyed one another.

“Is it even worth it for me to try to explain her behavior?” her father eventually asked with a sad smile.

“Do you understand it?” Mary asked glibly.