My mom, like I said, was the one who first told me about sex. Because I’d asked her, once, what was going on between her and Pop in their room at night sometimes, that room that shared a wall with mine.

“I can hear you in there,” I said. “You’re laughing and breathing hard, and the bed makes noises. Are you playing?”

It kind of hurts to think that I was once so, so innocent. But I was like eight years old. I thought they were wrestling or having a tickle fight.

Mom’s face colored, but she stayed calm. “No,” she answered lightly. “We’re having sex.”

She said it just like that: having sex. She didn’t say “making love” or try to give it some other, more romantic name. She matter-of-factly explained to me what sex was, and that it was how babies were created, and she talked for a while about the science of it—the sperm and the egg, the merging of two people’s DNA, the chromosomes, the dividing of cells. She said it was nothing to be embarrassed about, that it was a good thing, a natural thing, but it wasn’t something that a person was ready to do until they were older.

“Like during college,” she said.

For a while I associated the idea of sex with college—a time when you learned how to be a grown-up. So I didn’t give sex a lot of thought until Afton started talking about boys.

But when I think about it now—what Mom taught me about sex—I remember not the official talk, but this one night when Afton and I were sitting at the kitchen counter doing our homework. It sticks out in my mind, because Mom was cooking dinner.

This was rare—a special thing; Mom didn’t cook—that had always been Pop’s department. She didn’t have time, obviously. She was too busy being a whirlwind and saving lives. But this was a special occasion. Their anniversary. And Mom was making ratatouille, something she’d made for Pop when they were first dating, to impress him.

She was predictably good with a knife. I kept stopping at my algebra to watch her slice the zucchini, squash, eggplant, sweet peppers, and tomatoes so neatly, her hands careful and precise as she arranged each perfectly uniform piece in the dish.

Pop came into the room. His shirt was wet—he’d just given baby Abby a bath. He took parental leave those first two years after Abby was born. He stayed home with us. It was the best, those two years of pretty much uninterrupted Pop.

“I put her on the living room floor for some tummy time,” he said. “Mmm. That already smells good.”

He crossed behind Mom and put his arms around her waist. She kept arranging the vegetables, but she leaned back into him.