Mom shook her head, but then something—maybe my voice held an odd note I hadn’t intended that said how much I needed things to be different—made her look at me the way she used to. The planes of her face briefly softened, as though she’d glimpsed that I was lonely and mixed-up. Scared and not certain of anything anymore. And although she hesitated, she finally said, “Sure. I’ll be ready in half a shake.”

Only she wasn’t, and I searched both floors before finally finding her in the basement, peering into the washing machine.

“Mom, we’ve got to hurry if we want to make the early show.”

“I thought I had time to run this,” she said. “I don’t know why the machine’s filling so slowly.”

Her focus was gone again, and she sounded as though we had no plans for the evening except to do laundry. Maybe because she didn’t want to remember that the last time we had gone to a movie together, Dad had taken us.

“Come on,” I said, putting my arm around her. “Let’s watch a chick flick he wouldn’t have gone to in a million years. And we’ll order anchovies on our pizza. For sure he wouldn’t have eaten those!”

We saw a picture so bad it was perfect, and we came home still laughing—laughing hard for the first time since Dad had been around to laugh with us.

“Chocolate sundaes,” Mom said. “That’s what we need now. You want to make them while I move the laundry to the dryer?”

Then, moments later, voice panicky, she yelled, “Maggie!” She’d stopped partway down the basement stairs. Below her, water covered the floor.

“I’ll cut the power,” I said, and I ran to the electrical box in the garage.

With flashlights to guide us, we waded to the laundry room. Water gushed from a split washing machine hose. It stopped when we turned the valves off, but the mess!

By midnight, an outfit that specialized in cleanup emergencies had sucked the water away, sprayed mildew retardant, and provided fans to hurry the drying-out. The damage wasn’t too bad, as most of the basement was unfinished.

Dad’s office was the exception. There, studs were exposed where the cleanup crew had cut away the buckled bottoms of wallboard, and the flat-weave blue carpet, though it no longer squished when we stepped on it, was still damp.

But the worst thing about the room was that it was now empty. Dad’s furniture had been moved out, and his stacks of loose papers and boxes of files had been carried upstairs to the kitchen, making it smell of wet cardboard and glue.

Dad’s work was Dad, and for it to be gone, too . . .