Joy snorted, but there was something glittering in her eyes. It could have been anger or indignation, but it also could have been hope.

Chapter 49

JOY

MAGGIE AND JOY were making a Thai mango salad with peanut dressing, courtesy of Dinner by Dad. Maggie had relaxed her silent treatment soon after the neon-green plaster cast had been applied to her wrist and seemed to have accepted her punishment with something approaching equanimity.

Joy, despite what Lu had told her, had stopped looking for Anthony around every corner, behind every coffee cup, and was trying to focus on her business and her mothering. She had recently listened to a podcast about the teenage brain and had decided to try to remember in all of her dealings with Maggie that Maggie, like everyone her age, was operating without the full use of her frontal lobe and would be doing so for another full decade. (Astonishing, Joy thought; how was it that the driving age was sixteen and the drinking age twenty-one when the one hundred percent thinking age was twenty-five? Only the rental car companies seemed to understand this.)

Of course, they were still on precarious footing—more provisory détente than signed peace accord. Dinner by Dad had posted this particular recipe weeks earlier in the summer and Joy had bookmarked it but hadn’t made it yet. Dinner by Dad had given them the option to add crispy baked tofu or grilled chicken to the salad.

“Which do you think Charlie would choose?” asked Maggie. She speculated about Dinner by Dad’s boys like they were celebrities. Which they were, sort of. They were the most famous foodie children you’ve never seen, except in charcoal drawings.

“Definitely chicken,” said Joy. “Sammy would choose tofu. And Jacqui would have whatever Leo is having, because that’s how she rolls.”

“She’d be tired from work,” Maggie surmised.

“She’d just be happy to have someone put a meal in front of her!” Joy added.

Together Joy and Maggie debated the merits and drawbacks of each protein source. Chicken might be faster; tofu might be healthier. But there was the thing about the soy and the estrogen, so maybe not. In the end, chicken emerged victorious. “Actually, un-victorious, if you’re the chicken,” noted Maggie. Maggie’s sense of humor was coming back!

“Nice job with the pepper,” said Joy a few minutes later. Maggie’s knife skills were excellent, even encumbered by the cast. Joy gave herself partial credit for that because she’d taught Maggie to use real knives, sharp knives, when she was six. But the rest of it was Maggie’s particular blend of instinct and confidence, the stuff you couldn’t teach. “I’ll do the dressing,” added Joy, “and you do the jalapeños. Don’t forget the—”

“Seeds and membranes,” said Maggie. “I know.” She went at the jalapeño with grace and precision. A moment later, Maggie started to hum a song from Hamilton. “Helpless.” Her favorite. A good sign.

They kept at the salad: Maggie washing the lettuce, Joy seasoning the chicken to grill. Genius is patience, wasn’t that what Isaac Newton had said? Joy would be patient.