But there are days she wishes that her daughter better understood the tenuousness of it, wishes she could conceptualize the possibility of losing it; she sometimes wants to take Alma by the shoulders and warn her to appreciate Mark’s steadfastness—his presence, the constancy of it, as careworn and certain as a kitchen towel—and to contemplate, if even for a moment, what it might feel like to wake up and find it gone, as Julia had.
