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By Root 1164 0

but he wasn’t making dinner even though it was nearly five in the afternoon. They seemed to eat earlier here than they did in Pennsylvania, in part because Mom didn’t have such a long commute and got home earlier, but also because everyone here just seemed to do everything earlier. In Pennsylvania, Dad had usually done the cooking in those three- or four-day periods when he had been home and Mom had fed them when Dad had been flying. Of course, Mom’s dinners had been pretty likely to be frozen food or take-out pizza—which was absolutely fine. She was, essentially, a single parent half the time. And then there were those seasons when Mom was in a community theater drama or musical. Often those nights when Dad was flying, Garnet and Hallie would color or play games or do a little homework while eating deli sandwiches in the back of whatever gym or community center where Mom’s theater troupe was rehearsing.

When Garnet got downstairs, she found her father on his knees, rummaging through the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. His head and shoulders were invisible inside the cabinetry, and around his legs were the bottles and jars and brushes that usually were stored under there.

“Dad?”

Carefully he withdrew his upper body and sat on his heels. His hair was disheveled, and she noticed a thin trickle of sweat on his brow. He had a mug with cold coffee beside him.

“Hey, princess,” he said. He called both her and her sister princess. It was a term of endearment, but no more specific than honey or darling. “What do you need?”

“Can you help me with my math?” She held out the workbook like an offering, both of her hands beneath it as if she were presenting a sacred text to a rabbi or priest.

He was silent for a moment, and she wondered after she had spoken if this might be one of those instances that would be important years from now: the first time her dad had helped her with her math after the accident. A great step forward in the march back to normalcy. But when the moment grew long and still he had said nothing, she decided she was wrong: This would instead be merely one more of those times when her dad’s behavior would suggest it was going to be a long, long time before he was better.

“I mean, if you’re busy, I can probably figure it out myself,” she continued. She knew that sometimes she made people uncomfortable when she grew quiet. They feared she was about to have a seizure and go into a trance. Especially lately. But often it was just easier to say nothing and let everyone else do the talking, the deciding, and the … worrying. And it was nice to daydream. She liked the visions that sometimes marked the seizures. She wondered if her dad now had them, too.

“Oh, I’m not doing anything important,” he said finally.

“Cleaning?” she asked. “Organizing?”

“Something like that. I keep expecting to find a secret compartment back there.”

She nodded, intrigued by the idea that there might be one. She understood why her father might have such a suspicion. Sometimes she found strange things in this house and the barn and the greenhouse.

Abruptly he stood to full height and rubbed his hands together, a habit of his when he was excited about something. “Well,” he said, his voice robust and happy. “What have you got there?” Then he placed his palm on her back and escorted her to the dining room table, where together they tackled the two pages in the workbook.

Reseda Hill stood in her greenhouse a few steps in front of Anise, inspecting the scapes on the coral root she had transplanted earlier that winter. She kept the plants and spices for cooking cordoned off from the herbs for healing. Basil and parsley had no business mixing with hypnobium, belladonna, or amalaki. Her tomato seedlings in late April, prior to being transplanted into her vegetable garden, would not do well near the pungent aroma from the angel’s death. The greenhouse was pentagonal and divided in half: On the right side, as one entered, were those herbs and spices that were common to any chef with even a modicum of culinary education; on the left side were those