The pop was sharp enough to make me drop the dish towel. Gerald’s jar hit the kitchen floor eleven days after Nora left for Army basic training, and the glass broke under a wet slap of starter.

I stood there with the towel in my hand, looking at the sticky mess creeping toward the toe of my shoe. I had promised to keep that jar alive. Nora had made the promise sound like a test, and I had agreed because I thought a jar of flour and water was the least I could do.

The night before she left, she set Gerald on my counter and said, “If I come home and Gerald is dead, I will never forgive you.”

Then she showed me how to feed him. Equal flour and water, every Sunday. Don’t improvise. She tapped the cloudy jar with one fingernail, like I might otherwise forget it was there.

I was still fretting about her knees, her pay, and the job training she’d get after basic. I’d asked whether joining the Guard at twenty-seven was a brilliant decision or a delayed quarter-life crisis. Nora had given me the look she used when I made a joke because I didn’t know how to say I was scared.

“I’ve thought about it,” she said.

“I know you have.”

“Then trust me.”

I said I did. I meant that I trusted her to make her own choice. I’m not sure she heard it that way.

On the floor, the jar had split into pieces. The metal lid sat nearby, still screwed on. I remember noticing that before anything else, which is strange because I was standing in a mess of glass and sourdough and could have cut my foot open.

I put on my old gardening gloves and knelt. The starter smelled sour and yeasty, like Nora’s kitchen used to smell on Saturday mornings when she was still living at home. There were shards mixed into it. I moved slowly, picking them out one by one, then stopped when I saw a bit of thick starter on the bottom curve of the jar.

I didn’t know if it was enough to save. I didn’t know if I should even touch it. But the idea of throwing it away made me feel worse than the broken glass did.

So I scraped the cleanest bit into a mug, covered it with a saucer, and called the bakery on Maple Street.

The owner, Mr. Pritchard, had helped Nora with bread questions before she enlisted.

“Was the lid tight?” he asked.

I looked at the lid. “Pretty tight.”

“That’s likely it. Gas has to get out. A jar can’t take that pressure forever.”

I wanted him to say it was only the heat. The thermostat had kicked the furnace on after a cool morning, then the weather warmed up again, and the kitchen got hotter than I’d noticed. But Mr. Pritchard said a warm room could make a starter active fast, and a tight lid could trap the gas.

“I’m sorry,” I said, though he hadn’t done anything.

“I’d check Nora’s notes,” he said. “She was careful about that stuff.”

The notebook was under a stack of mail by the bread box. I knew it was hers because she used a blue pen and wrote the number seven with a line through it.

I turned a few pages, looking for the feeding instructions, and found them in her tidy block letters.

Feed Sunday. Equal flour and water. Lid loose, never tight.

I sat down at the table. I had read her notes before she left. I’d even said, “Got it.” I couldn’t remember seeing that part, but there it was in blue ink, plain as anything. I could blame the warm day. I could blame the jar. I could say I’d tried my best.

I had tightened the lid myself because the counter was near the edge and I thought it would be safer. That was the whole story of it.

For a while I just sat there with the notebook open. Then I started cleaning. I swept up the glass, wiped the cabinet doors twice, and washed the floor until my hands smelled like dish soap. The sourdough stayed in the mug under the saucer. I was still hoping it might live.

Nora’s next call was scheduled for Sunday evening. I spent the days before it checking that mug as if the starter might tell me what to say. I fed it a spoonful of flour and water, then moved it away from the stove. It bubbled a little by the next morning. I called that good news, though I knew better than to get ahead of myself.

I could have waited until Nora was home. That would’ve been easier for me. But she’d asked me to care for Gerald, and I’d broken the jar. I wasn’t going to add a lie to it.

Sunday night, I kept the landline close. Nora’s call came at 7:18. There was a lot of background noise, and her voice sounded far away.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey. How are you?”

“Fine. Tired. We’ve got a minute.”

I had written down what I wanted to say. I didn’t use the paper.

“Gerald’s jar broke,” I said.

Nothing for a few seconds. Then, “What?”

“The kitchen got warm when the furnace came on. I’d screwed the lid on too tight. The jar burst.”

“You killed him?”

“I did. I’m sorry.”

“You were supposed to leave the lid loose.”

“I know. Your notebook said that. I saw it after.”

Her voice got sharp. “You knew the instructions.”

“I did.”

“You said you’d take care of him.”

“I know.”

I started to explain about the glass, the heat, the starter I’d saved. I could hear myself making a case for why I wasn’t careless, and I stopped. She didn’t need a case. She needed me to tell her what I’d done.

“I tightened the lid because I thought I was helping,” I said. “I should’ve listened.”

There was a crackle on the line. Then Nora said, “You always do that.”

I didn’t answer.

“You say you trust me, and then you keep waiting for me to change my mind.”

I leaned my elbow on the table. The phone cord caught on the edge of the notebook.

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“I don’t know if you mean it.”

“I mean it.”

She breathed into the receiver. I knew that sound. It was the breath she took when she was trying not to cry, back when she was twelve and had to start over at a new school. She’d hated that I remembered.

“I was scared,” she said. “I still am.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. I’m scared I’ll get there and I won’t be good at it. I’m scared I’ll come back different. And I wanted to know there’d still be something at home that was the same.”

I looked at the covered mug. The little bit of starter had risen enough to leave a smear near the rim.

Nora had always been the one who acted like she needed nobody. When she moved out, she didn’t ask me to keep a key. When she was laid off from the salon, she told me after she’d already found another job. I had thought her enlistment was one more thing she’d decided to do without needing me.

I was wrong about that.

“I needed to know you’d still be here,” she said.

That was the line I had been afraid to hear, though I hadn’t known it. I pressed the phone tighter to my ear. I wanted to tell her I’d always be here, but I knew how that sounded. Like a promise meant to end the conversation.

“I’m here,” I said. “And I’m not going to pretend I didn’t mess up.”

She sniffed once. “Can you save any of him?”

“I think so. I’ve got a little bit in a mug.”

“Don’t call him Gerald Junior.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were absolutely going to.”

I almost laughed. It came out as a breath instead.

She had to hang up. Before she did, she said, “Feed it Sunday. Don’t overdo it.”

“I won’t.”

The call ended. I kept the phone in my hand for a while, listening to the dial tone, then went to check the mug.

Three weeks later, I had a lively starter in a glass container with a loose lid. I wrote Gerald Junior on a scrap of tape anyway. Nora had told me not to, but sometimes I’m stubborn in the least useful ways.

I fed it every Sunday. I kept a small note by the flour tin with the date and amount, because apparently I’d become the sort of person who kept records on a jar. The starter rose and fell. It smelled sharp, then sweet, then sharp again. Mr. Pritchard said that was normal.

Nora’s letters came when they could. They were short and practical. She told me her feet hurt and her bunk was uncomfortable. She asked if the starter was still alive. I wrote back that it was, and that I was following the instructions this time.

I didn’t tell her I checked it before bed. She’d have teased me.

Basic took longer than the eleven days that had felt like a year. When the graduation date came, I packed a loaf baked from the revived starter in a tin and drove to the base. I had been afraid the dough would fail on the trip, so I packed a second loaf too. I know. One could have been enough.

Nora looked tired when she came out with the other graduates, but she was smiling. She spotted me, then saw the tin in my hands.

“You brought bread?”

“I did.”

“Is it Gerald?”

“His descendant.”

She laughed and took the tin. We sat side by side on a barracks bench, and she broke off the heel while it was still warm. I had brought the new jar too, wrapped in a dish towel. She held it in her lap, checking the loose lid with her thumb.

“I’m sorry I made the jar carry all that,” she said.

“I’m sorry I kept acting like your choice was a phase.”

She nodded. Neither of us said much after that. Nora took another bite, and I watched her chew, then laughed when a crumb stuck to her uniform.

She leaned her shoulder against mine, still holding the jar. Then she broke the last piece of the heel in half and handed it to me. We sat there eating bread, laughing at the idea that one jar had been holding our family together.