Chapter 12: Back Row

I walked down my father's hall in the flannel shirt and pulled the curtain back an inch.

A silver car sat across the street with its engine off.

Lenora was behind the wheel. She had her forehead on her hands.

Alexander came up behind me, buttoning his shirt.

"Do you want me to go out there?" he said.

"No."

"Do you want to?"

I watched her shoulders shake.

For eight years, if that car had pulled up outside my door at one in the morning, I would have been down the steps before she turned the engine off.

"No," I said again.

I typed one line and sent it.

Go home, Nora.

Lenora lifted her head and read it. She sat there a long time.

Then she started the car, turned on the headlights and drove away without looking at the house.

I let the curtain fall.

Alexander didn't say anything. He put his hand flat between my shoulder blades, and I stood there and leaned into it.

He stayed. We went up to my room, and I fell asleep before I had time to think.

In the morning he was in my kitchen, making coffee in my father's percolator.

I came to the doorway in a pair of his socks.

"You found the grounds."

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