At my father’s retirement dinner, my parents seated my husband

Who’d built her whole self on knowing which rooms she belonged in. She was doing the math too, and I could see the exact second the total came out wrong.

The emerald-green woman near the front started clapping.

Just her, at first.

Then the logistics CEO. Then the couple by the windows. Then a table I didn’t recognize, and another, and it spread the way continue reading …