I read Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See aloud to Flicka, delivering the final chapters as she mixes and rolls cookies. I think of all the paragraphs filled with the young, blind French girl navigating war-torn Saint-Malo, guided by the miniature replica of the city her father built her. Can my soul ever go on? How many heart-slicing books have I read in my life, convinced I’ll never heal from them? I always do and surrender to fresh woundings with each new story. When the words run out of this one, though, I sit at our kitchen island under the crushing weight of it.
“I cut back on the sugar,” Flicka says, “but I kept the same amount of butter.”
“Well, that’s good,” I say, not really caring one way or the other about baked goods when I know what became of young Werner.
I committed more reading than writing this week, so come back next Thursday for a hopefully better, longer story. For now, help yourself to a cookie.
Here are some photos of Flicka’s treats. (No photographic evidence available of my literature-broken heart.)
