Sofia looked at them — her mother’s wet-eyed, unrepentant face, her sister’s loud laugh, the steam rising off the pot in a thin column through the light from the open window — and she picked up the lid and let it fall, and the smell filled the room the way a house fills when somebody finally comes back into it.
Outside, the street was loud and ordinary: a car door, a dog, somebody’s radio. The window was up all the way. The chair was set. Rosa’s hand found Sofia’s and closed around it and did not let go.
They ate, and nobody at that table was carrying a tray for anyone.
