My eyes open not because of the noise downstairs, but there is noise downstairs. Sounds. High-pitched whoops from Lolly no doubt because she’s playing with something at the breakfast table while Sadee is just trying to get her to eat. I’ve seen it, and heard it, many times, and a smile flits across my face in spite of myself.

I just pretend it’s just another morning, not one after your wife has glided into bed the night before after her date with her girlfriend. While I walk to the bathroom I muse about the little I know about the brain, but that it’s divided into segments—I don’t know what the word is for it all. When I shake the drops and most of them unfortunately fall onto my foot, I’m thinking about a maze, compartments, and I get biology mixed up with architecture and with desperate hope when I see a specific compartment for where I can store these thoughts about Sadee.

I look down at my damp foot, a second, five seconds, and ultimately just think, Fuck it, and I clear off the top of it with the other foot. I splash cold water on my face, put on my bathrobe, and head downstairs.

Nobody rushes toward me like I’m the best thing they can imagine right now, but I know they love me.

“Daddy’s up!” Sadee shouts.

“Hi, Dad,” Grady says. “Good morning.”

Sadee and I finally have to look at each other and I can’t fathom in the least what she is feeling and so just try to be a big boy and go over and give her a light kiss on the cheek.

“Morning,” she says, and something goes through me, something angry, where I calculate that that’s not enough thanks for what I am doing here.

I pull away and survey the place. It’s the same as usual. I don’t know what I expected otherwise.

“There’s coffee,” Sadee says, and it’s a good reminder of a small pleasure, a dependable ritual, that can make me feel the teensiest bit better at any time no matter what is happening in my life.

I get myself a bagel and a banana and the jar of peanut butter and sit down in what is always my seat. It occurs to me that it’s odd that no matter what the kids are involved in at the table, and it’s usually at least one thing other than or instead of eating, my place is sacrosanct. An unspoken kindness.

Goddamn it, the coffee is good, and I realize that I’m starving too. The circus continues around me so that Sadee and I don’t actually have to talk, and so I concentrate on breakfast. I finish what’s on my plate and get up for another banana and some yogurt.

“John,” Sadee says when I sit back down.

I look at her, speechless in all ways.

“This is not the place,” she continues, “like right here and right now, and we can talk later—sorry, I just want to say thanks for, well, last night, I mean how you, how you handled last night. And now this morning.”

I’m not a saint and I’m sad that last night isn’t referring to any connection between her and me.

I fumble with slicing the banana. “Hey, it’s okay,” I say to her, and I’m not even sure that means anything. Anything logical. Is that a viable, acceptable answer to what she said, or is it as though she had said something about my hair and I had started to talk about Iran?

I finish the banana slicing and mix the pieces with the yogurt. When I look up again she’s still looking at me, but I have nothing left in me, nothing I can summon right now, and so I just smile weakly. Why do I have to be the one who does everything right and civil?

After everyone is done at the table and things are cleaned and cleared away, everyone heads to their ritual respective corners. Grady goes upstairs to his computer. Lolly stays to wrangle with her toys a little more. Sadee is pulling some papers from her portfolio and I know it’s the usual weekend preparation for an upcoming busy week.