Tuesday meant rice at our house. A package of chicken thighs, a handful of carrots, half an onion. Everything was timed down to the minute. I was slicing the carrots to a certain thickness, cooking the rice to a precise quantity, portioning the chicken so that dinner would feed three people, and lunch for the next day was already planned. Every Tuesday, I performed this calculation mechanically, like calculations you do so often that they become a reflex.
I was in the middle of my calculations when my daughter Sam burst through the back door with a stranger. Source: Unsplash
The girl in the hoodie had her sleeves rolled up to her knuckles despite the heat and kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
