Her father slept in the nursery that night, on the daybed under the window that had been her mother's window, and in the morning Nora found him in the kitchen making pancakes.
He had found Leo's cast-iron griddle in the bottom cabinet and the flour in the canister and he was standing at the stove in yesterday's good blue shirt with a dish towel over one shoulder, pouring batter in slow, deliberate spirals. He didn't turn around when she came in.
"Sit," he said. "Feet up. Doctor's orders."
She sat. He put a plate in front of her. On it was a pancake shaped like nothing on earth, a lopsided starburst with a tail.
"Lemon tree," Frank said.
She looked at it. She looked at him. Her face crumpled, and then, impossibly, she was laughing, laughing with tears running down into her mouth, and her father sat down across from her and put his big scarred hand over hers on the table and let her.
Her phone was face down on the counter. She'd turned it off in the hospital. When she turned it on, it buzzed for almost a full minute.
Forty-one texts from Grant. She didn't read them in order. She read them the way you'd touch a bruise, a few at a time, pressing.
I'm so sorry.
Please let me talk to you. Please.
It's not what it looked like. I mean it is but it isn't. It's been a really confusing time.
Are you ok? Is the baby ok? Priya won't answer me.
I love you. I know you don't believe that.