The kitchen light was still on. I walked in to take my medication and noticed that my ticket was gone. I assumed I had knocked it somewhere. I looked briefly, didn’t find it, decided it could wait until morning. It could not wait until morning, but I did not know that yet. 3 days later, on a Sunday, Derek and Cynthia came home from somewhere in the early afternoon.
I was in the garden pulling the last of the winter weeds before the real cold came back. I heard the car, heard the door, heard something in the quality of their voices that I could not name, but recognized the way you recognize a smell you haven’t encountered in years. Excited, controlled, careful. I came inside.
Cynthia was standing at the kitchen table looking at her phone. Derek was pacing the way he did when he couldn’t contain something. He looked at me and the look lasted one second too long. Good news, I asked. Just work stuff, he said, and smiled with his mouth. I nodded. I made dinner. But that evening, sitting at the table where Roland and I had eaten 10,000 meals, I felt for the first time something I can only describe as a cold alertness.