“I was almost killed in Jamaica,” she said at breakfast one day. “Your dad swam away from our boat and a wind came up. I started sailing out to sea.” She spoke with the urgency of a first telling, though Ellen had heard the story many times.

“Jesus, what a nightmare,” her father said, looking up from his paper. “You were going so fast I couldn’t catch up. I was splashing around, screaming how to turn the boat, but you couldn’t hear me.”

“So what happened?” Ellen cried, caught in the story.

“I jumped off,” her mother said. “I swam back to your father. The boat kept going.” She was washing apples in the kitchen sink. Now she stopped, still holding the colander under the running faucet, and turned to Ellen’s father. They looked at each other, and Ellen felt a current of something between them that startled her.