Maybe he had.
Behind the glass of the china cabinet, the lighthouse plate gazed out at her, blue and white and calm. She had wanted to take those plates down the first week. She had wanted to put up her own things. Andre had said, Let's give it time, babe, and she had given it time, a whole year of eating dinner beneath a cabinet full of another woman's family.
She sat alone at the table, eyes wide, mouth open, her hands pressed flat on either side of her plate as though the table might tip over.
Somewhere down the block a dog was barking. The steak was cold. The roll was still there.
She did not eat it. She did not touch it. After a long time she understood that she was sitting there waiting for somebody to tell her she could.
III
For the first three blocks Andre did not know where he was driving. He only knew he was driving away.
Lulu was buckled into the booster seat he kept in the back of the crew cab for Saturday pickups. Theo sat beside her with his backpack in his lap and both arms around it, the way you'd hold a dog that might jump out of a window. Nobody said anything. The heater rattled. The dashboard clock said 7:42, and the streetlights on Delancey came on one after another as if somebody were walking ahead of them flipping switches.
At the light by the Kroger, Andre looked in the rearview mirror. Lulu was staring at the bright windows of the store.
"Y'all ate today?" he said. His voice came out wrong, too careful.
Silence. Then Theo: "I had lunch at school."
"Lu?"
Lulu looked at her brother before she answered. Andre saw her do it — saw her check — and something cold went down the middle of his back.
"I had a cheese stick," she said.
"What else?"
She thought about it. "Crackers."