CNU-At my mother’s Sunday dinner, my sister offered to take my five-year-old daugh…

that my mother, Ivy, opened the dining room windows. The house smelled like baked chicken, lemon floor cleaner, and the lilac candle she always lit when company came. Outside, sprinklers clicked across the lawn in slow circles.

Laya sat beside me at the table, wearing a blue dress with tiny white flowers. She had picked it herself because she said it continue reading …