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sitting down. Dad sneezes, but digs into his food with a wordless sigh.
    â€œSo,” he says after a few more sneezes. He clears his throat. Twice. “The Spring Kite Festival is in May.”
    My fork clangs against the plate. “And?”
    He takes a sip of water. “And I hoped we could enter this year. Make a kite from scratch like we used to. Remember our sled kite? I would really love to finish it.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake,” Mom mumbles, bring her glass of wine to her lips. Dad frowns, but says nothing.
    â€œI remember,” I say. Last spring, we had planned to do this beautiful and ambitious sled kite, with silky blue and green inflatable spars. We never made it to that festival. The kite’s packed in a box somewhere in the garage, half made.
    â€œHad, I understand why you didn’t want to do it this past year. But this festival . . . we’ve participated in it since you were three. It’s part of our family. Can’t we at least try to get back to normal?”
    Normal? Dad’s been clawing his way back to normal for months and still hasn’t figured out that it no longer exists.
    â€œI don’t know, Dad, you tell me.” I’m so tired of this whole scene. “What level of
normal
is normal enough for you? Me back on a swim team? Me proofreading your papers and sharing a laugh over how you always confuse
y-o-u-r
with
y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e
when you type too fast, just like old times? If that’s normal, then . . .”
    My throat rebels against me, tightening, and I scoot my chair back. It scrapes against the tile and Mom winces. “May I be excused?”
    â€œNo.” Dad sniffs and rubs at his red nose. “No, you may not. We need to talk about this.”
    â€œAbout what? There’s nothing to talk about!”
    â€œHadley, I can’t keep—”
    â€œJason.” Mom’s voice is all jagged edges, and it silences him. “Let her go.” She nods in my general direction as her thin fingers wrap around her wineglass, lifting it over her untouched food to her pale lips.
    Dad’s face darkens. “Annie, we need to—”
    â€œ
We
don’t need to do anything. Hadley, go on.”
    I don’t waste any time. Bolting upstairs, I barely close my bedroom door behind me before falling onto my bed and unleashing a scream into my pillow. Once my throat is loose and raw, I roll over, my eyes grazing over my bookshelves packed with neglected favorites. I pluck a small rectangular strip of paper from the drawer in my nightstand. I’ve handled it so much, stared at it so many nights, it’s wrinkled and as soft as cotton.
    There used to be a lot more of them, maybe fifty or so, but my dad fed them through the shredder. I sat on the porch steps, open eyes seeing nothing, while he raked his hands down the front door to dislodge the accusations. One got loose and floated toward me. I pocketed it. A reminder that nothing is ever as it seems.
    I had come home early one day this past April from my private swim session with Coach Lyons. My shoulder was sore from an exhibition meet the week before, and she sent me home with instructions to ice it and rest up. I knew my mom would still be at work, and Dad rarely got home before seven because of a big paper on T. S. Eliot he was preparing for some academic journal. I parked in my usual spot at the end of the driveway, but had barely clicked off the ignition before I noticed the papers blanketing the front door. They danced lightly in the afternoon breeze, graceful and deceptively beautiful.
    When my feet hit the sidewalk, I could see the handwritten words, but I couldn’t really read them until I was standing on the steps. Even then, the writing blurred and I barely recognized the name on the paper. I remember releasing a single laugh. When the sound first split the warm air, I thought it was all a joke. By the time my voice died, a thousand