Rick chewed his pork chop, which had gotten tough in the oven while Janine took her phone call. He was a thorough chewer and a patient listener. Janine had once worried that he might miss being a father to sons—quiet, stalwart builders and fishermen, like all the men in his family—but Rick was perfectly content to be the father of these girls, with their pretty smiles and constant chatter. In fact, he seemed to want little more than what he had: a house, a wife who did not bring work problems home with her, daughters around his table telling him things about the world he had given them. Sometimes he expressed the desire for a bigger fishing boat or some hunting property. Sometimes he mentioned a recipe from the early days of their marriage, something too fatty or caloric for Janine to make in good conscience. But mostly he was content, perhaps more so as each year passed.

“But the final grade is based on a project, not an exam,” Beth continued, tossing back her hair and pushing aside the healthy mound of potatoes her mother had served her. “Which I hope is not a group project, because I really work better on my own.”

For a long time Janine had not wanted anything more either. Now she was having a hard time following what her daughter was saying. What did Rick think would become of them when—very soon—their daughters left them? Janine wondered what surprise Chrissy had in store for her eighteenth birthday. Perhaps a piercing, but more likely something more inconvenient and self-sacrificing: a trip to Africa or South America, an allegiance to a sect of the church that took her away from her family to somewhere dusty and unhygienic and dangerous.

Janine let her mind drift above the table, above the conversation anchored by Rick’s attention and the girls’ self-involvement, which she herself had cultivated over twenty-one years of care. She floated over them, through the family room and into the solarium, above the desk and the folder that contained her poems. During these months of anxious waiting, she’d felt something separate and strange growing inside her—not confidence or certainty, exactly, but promise. She felt full of promise, in a way she hadn’t since she was pregnant.