We were sitting at the kitchen table in companionable silence. The oil lamp shone on her sewing and my library book. I’d given up on poisoning and was now reading Sherlock Holmes purely for entertainment. All was calm and ordinary. You could scarcely believe that Shin and my stepfather had traded blows here, wrecking the old table, and then smashing out into the back courtyard, or whatever finally happened that terrible evening. But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.
