Mia didn’t mind; it gave her an excuse to stay home with Eden and putter. Glorious, sunny weather brought with it a particular kind of reproach: shouldn’t she be out biking/skating/flying a kite in the park with her child? The rain absolved her of all that relentless good cheer; they could stay at home, content to watch the fat raindrops hit the windows and then trickle down, to pool on the cracked, chipped sills. After breakfast, Mia and Eden played a series of board games: Monopoly, Life, Stratego, Scrabble. Not one of these games was intact; there were pieces missing from all of them, but Eden didn’t mind. “We don’t have to do what the rules say anyway.” She confidently rattled two mismatched dice in her hand. “We can make our own rules, right?” “Right,” said Mia, feeling irrationally proud of her. “We sure can.” It had been hard for Eden since Lloyd left. There were two more incidents of cursing in school—this time just at other kids though, and Eden claimed they cursed at her first—and a couple of extended crying jags.
