Where I saw a much too small bedroom for two growing boys, she saw the walls covered with their watercolors, crayon drawings, and art projects of my own invention. She noticed the homemade picture frames made of corrugated cardboard that the boys and I had painted. She said, “Nice,” and in an effort to be completely honest, I admitted the idea for the frames had been appropriated from an arts-and-crafts magazine. “Still,” she said, meaning I had done it. Yes, she was impressed, and not because it was my idea but because I’d taken the time to find and implement someone else’s good idea.

Where I saw the trundle bed Tim had built for the boys as a kind of primitive configuration of white pine, she admired the ingenuity of the design, the care he’d taken, the charm of the names painted on the headboards.

To my surprise, the opposite of what I’d expected occurred. I saw our home with her eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I liked what I saw. The evident care taken, the make-do practicality, the creative touches. The art in our home was the simple art of our children. Still, I nearly gasped when she said, “There’s so much love here.”

I smiled and said, “That’s kind.”

“It’s not kind. It’s what I see.”

I left the room to compose myself, wipe my eyes.

I was in the kitchen boiling water for tea when Tim called. As I described earlier, he was in a panic. As I half listened to him, I checked to see if Anna was all right. “Don’t worry about me,” she said from down the hall, where she was looking at the framed photos on our wobbly bookcase. The teapot whistled. After I hung up with Tim, I asked Anna to come back to the kitchen. Using a yellow sponge, I wiped the breakfast table clean.

“That was Tim,” I said, gesturing for her to sit in the good chair. “He had to leave town.”

I straddled a stool. Because of the metal security gate that covered our kitchen window, the morning sun cast fractured shadows across both Anna and me. She seemed much too bright and vibrant for our little kitchen. Rather akin to Greta Garbo in Kmart. But she didn’t seem to mind.

She asked where Tim had gone.

“Back home,” I said. “A family crisis.”

I explained that Tim had a complicated relationship with his dad and that it was hard for me to have sympathy because I never had a father.

“Oh,” she said with a sad smile. “What’s the problem with his dad?” There were countless stories about Coach that I could have told, but for some reason, this is the one I chose.

That previous Christmas he’d sent Tim a box of Cayton College Lady Revolvers swag—a light blue and pink warm-up suit, tennis shoes, even a team jacket, all with the Nike insignia prominently displayed. This was his gift. Pissed, Tim promptly threw everything in the trash. Several days later, while walking across the Heights, he saw a man decked out in Cayton College athletic apparel. Shocked, Tim approached the man to ask if he’d gone to Cayton. But then he realized the man was homeless, and the clothes had been the ones Tim had thrown out.