She’d been impressed with what she’d decided was routine for Jennie and Rob, who had fallen to their kitchen duty in a practiced fashion. Jennie carried dishes and cutlery from the table to the counter beside the sink. And she folded napkins and threaded them neatly through napkin rings. They had joked about bouncing broccoli as a bowl of leftovers made a tipsy journey to the fridge. Jennie had picked up a fallen spear and kissed it, said it would be all right after a bath and handed it to Rob to run some water over the wayward green clump. It was easy to see that the after-dinner cleanup was not a chore; rather, Rob had designed it as one more way to have some easy and enjoyable interaction with his daughter. Piper liked that. But now she felt a twinge of discomfort, sitting by herself at the kitchen table. She flipped through a cookbook that featured large, full-color photographs. Some of the pages had marks on them. Color-coded check marks and occasional comments about changes to the recipe or how the dish had been received.
