The Probable Future
“Even at breakfast, problems were sure to arise. Someone was bound to prefer hard-boiled eggs to fried. Someone was certain to resent a comment that veered too close to criticism. Someone could be counted on to slam out the door, insisting she was no longer hungry or that she never ate breakfast anyway, and hadn’t for years. In the Sparrow household, there was the sort of civility that was far worse than yelling and screaming. It was a cold curtain of mistrust. When people related by blood were ...so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there’s rain again, it’s sunny, it’s cold. Has the dog eaten? Has the window been shut? Where are you going? Why is it I don’t know you at all?Such statements did not add up to anything like a family, and yet Elinor Sparrow had hope. True, she and Jenny had spoken less than a mouthful of words to each other since Jenny’s arrival; they had sat down together at the dinner table on a single occasion, and then only because Stella forced them to do so—an attempt which, having been met with nothing but awkward silence and lukewarm asparagus quiche, had not been repeated.MoreLess
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