"It's August, Mom."
Diane kissed her on the temple, quick and dry, and pulled back to look at her. Her mother had cut her hair. It had been long for as long as Nora could remember, brown going silver, usually twisted up with a clip, and now it was short and swept to one side and colored a warm honey that took ten years off her. She was wearing a sleeveless linen dress Nora had never seen.
"Your hair," Nora said.
"Do you hate it?"
"No. It's—you look great."
"Your father hasn't noticed." Diane said this lightly, already turning to the freezer, already elbowing the door open with the bag of ice. "Three days. I could shave my head and he'd ask me if we were out of milk." She stopped. "Where's the second tray? The tall one?"
"What tall one?"
"The ice tray. The long one. It was in the—" Diane pulled open the drawer under the oven, the one where Grant kept the odd-shaped things, the bundt pan and the popsicle molds he'd bought in a fit of optimism, and came out with a long silicone tray. "There."
Nora watched her rinse it. It was a small thing. It was the kind of small thing that would later line up with all the other small things and form a shape, but at eleven in the morning it was just her mother knowing where something was in a kitchen her mother had grown up in. Things moved, though. Nora had redone this kitchen. That drawer hadn't existed when Diane lived here.
"I'll do the lemonade," Diane said. "You sit."
"I want to do it."
"Nora."
"It's Grandpa's tree. I want to do it."
Her mother's face did something then, a flicker so fast Nora would have missed it if she hadn't been looking right at her. Not anger. Something more tired than anger. Then it was gone and Diane was smiling. "Fine. Do it the way I taught you, though. Not the way he did it. He used too much sugar."