Or for dinner at home. Sometimes, he wasn't even home by the time I went to sleep.

I remembered the Fourth of July barbecue again and felt a sudden surge of disappointment. I'd wanted my father to be home for dinner. I'd wanted to sit around the table with my family and talk to them. I'd wanted to listen to my mother and father tell jokes and stories and ask Tiffany how her garden was growing and Maria if going to swim practice every day was turning her hair green.

But I guessed it wasn't going to happen that night.

"I'll go walk Astrid," I said.

My mother didn't mention the jacket again. She just said, "Don't stay out too long. Maria will be home from swim practice soon and it'll be time for dinner."

"I'll set the table as soon as I get back," I offered.

"Fine," said my mother, turning back to the stove.

I called Astrid in from the backyard, waving the leash. Astrid came racing to me with an undignified, doggy grin, wriggling with delight at the prospect of a walk.

"I'm taking Astrid for a walk," I called to Tiffany. "Want to come?"

But Tiffany, who'd turned when I'd called, was already turning baick as she shook her head no. As we left the house, I looked over the fence. Tiffany was still in her garden at the foot of the yard. I could see my mother at the kitchen window on the side of the house, moving slowly back and forth, her head down. My father was still at work. Maria was still at swim practice.

It made me feel weird. Like my family was a bunch of those magnetized marbles that roll around all over the place and sometimes come together and stick and sometimes repel each other like they don't belong together at all. It was as if we were all in the "marble-repel" mode. We might look alike, we might look as if we belong to the same family.

But right now, we didn't feel like it. I felt weird. And sort of sad, somehow.