My right hand holds the steering wheel while my eyes follow the bracelet around my wrist. It moves in steady semicircles, back and forth. I put it on this morning for luck, and once again, it delivered.

Silence fills the entire car. If we rolled down the windows now, it would spill out onto the street and the trees in the wind would lapse into pantomime. I like being inside this soundproof capsule, and I can tell Dad is happy too.

I’m not sure whether he’s happy because the meeting went well or because neither of us interrupted the other or started an argument. Maybe he’s happy for some entirely different reason. Or maybe he’s just happy. In my mind, I start guessing how long we’ll manage to enjoy it together.

I give us five minutes, we last three.

During the remaining half hour of the drive, we build another twenty apartments in Prague, a hundred flats in Slovakia, and excavate a tunnel in Poland. Then we start imagining how wonderfully peaceful life will be if none of it works out.

This engine doesn't run on diesel.

Later, while we wait for my mother outside the building, we fall silent again. As though both of us are privately rehearsing what we'll say if she disagrees, and how on earth we'll manage everything if she doesn't. Deep down, we're both laughing with delight at this fit of dreaming.

Except it isn't always like this.

I strain toward remembrance, but everything heavy and painful is currently overgrown with pale pink peonies. Eventually, I manage to dredge up a few fragments of my shredded nerves. To them I add my father's removed kidney, my sister's aching sinuses, my mother's enlarging heart, and several other irreparably damaged shards.

Then I can think of nothing better than picking up a soldering iron and giving it a try. One piece joins another. Slowly, carefully, as carefully as I can manage. In time, a large turquoise fish emerges, mottled with black spots that show faintly through its skin, much like they do on our French bulldog.

It is beautiful. Shiny and smooth, its mouth wide open in a perfect circle. Then it clicks.

Like my bracelet.

When I turn it over, I notice it has rooster feet. And it is crowing.

Yet I decide not to fix it.