Thresholds

Chapter 21

One evening in mid-October, I found Helen at the kitchen sink holding Maya’s dinner plate. The plate was nearly full—the chicken cut into its usual small squares, rearranged but not eaten, the rice sculpted into a mound that had been shaped and reshaped without diminishing.

“She said she ate at Cassie’s,” I said.

“I know what she said.”

Helen scraped the f…