“Even in our family context,” she said, “is probably more important than most other contexts. Because our family context has a lot of dynamics.”
I laughed. “I’m noticing.”
She smiled. It was the first real smile she had given me all lunch, and it was the kind of smile that is an invitation rather than a performance. I accepted it.
We stayed for another forty minutes. She told me about a thing with Tom’s family that I will not repeat here because it is not my story to tell. I told her about the Cincinnati project. We agreed to do this again next month.
Driving home I thought: I have a sister-in-law. I did not have one before, not really. Now I think I do.
## The Things That Are Still Unresolved
I want to be careful not to write an ending that suggests everything is resolved, because everything is not resolved.
Daniel and I have a genuine disagreement, still active, about the incident at the birthday dinner in the fall — not Marian’s birthday, a different birthday, a cousin’s fortieth that happened in October. There was a moment at the dinner where someone asked Daniel about our household and he gave an accurate answer but then, in the follow-up conversation, allowed an assumption to stand that he should have corrected. The assumption was minor but it was not nothing, and I noticed it and he noticed me noticing it and on the drive home we had a conversation that was tenser than I would have liked.