After My Father’s

“That’s unkind to snakes.”

Nora muted the television.

Everyone looked at me.

I thought of Samuel Bell in the diner. Laura Bell laughing too loud in restaurants. My father writing apologies he never delivered. My husband smiling over a dead woman’s name.

Then I said, “Call a press conference.”

Nora’s eyebrows rose. “Carrie—”

“No. He wants silence. He wants continue reading …