Sunday night, seven people around one table

Sunday. Wrung out, and still driving home. There's an unspoken rule in the house: Sunday evening, everyone comes home for dinner. No excuses. Her parents, the two sisters, her brother-in-law, the two kids — seven people around one table, week after week.

Nothing about the meal is special. Crab soup, pickled eggplant, braised pork. Nothing about the conversation is either. Some nights she sits down with her head still at work, just wanting to finish and go. Then her father says it out loud — how many more years do your mother and I get to sit like this with you — and the table goes quiet. She puts the phone away and stays.

One week she was too tired. She typed it out for her mother: I'm busy this week. Then left it sitting there, unsent, thinking about her father's chair at the head of the table. Her mother messaged first — she'd already bought the pickled eggplant. She'd gone to the market that afternoon. The rule was never a weight someone put on her. It was the thing her parents waited all week for. She deleted the message and typed a new one: I'll be there early.

At the table it's all small talk. The neighbours, the price of things, her nephew getting scolded by his teacher. She used to think none of it landed anywhere. Then the next week her father repeated it back, every detail intact. He never needed the information. He needed her sitting there.

He remembers everything I tell him. I've never asked him anything back.

Next week she'll keep talking, like always. And his stories — maybe this time she asks first.