My brother got married—and I wasn’t told. I found out the way strangers do: a photo on my phone, taken while I sat in a Kansas City coffee shop, a paper cup warming my hands.

I shook my head. They banged their forks. “Fine,” I said. “Here’s my toast: I used to think adulthood was keeping everyone full. Then I thought it was keeping everyone happy. Now I think it’s keeping the promises you made to yourself when you were smart enough to make them and humble enough to know they’d be hard.”

We clinked water glasses because sensible adulthood is sometimes also early mornings.

At ten, after the dishes were stacked and the last crumb-proof claims were refuted, I stood alone in the kitchen and put both palms on the table. The oak was cool and absolutely there. The joinery fit. Walt would have been proud. So would the girl who learned to tighten loose screws with money and then learned to do it with words and then learned that sometimes the screw needs to come out and the whole wobbly thing needs to be taken apart and rebuilt with a different blueprint.