Chapter 7: The Porch Light

I did not open the box until after midnight.

I carried it up to the blue room, set it on the quilt and looked at it.

I took Grandma her pills.

I peeled potatoes and learned that the kitchen faucet still dripped on the left.

At eleven that night I went out and sat on the porch swing with the box on my knees, under the yellow light.

It was twenty-nine degrees.

I could see my breath.

I did not feel it.

A back door opened across the yard.

Nolan crossed the grass in his boots with a mug in each hand and a pair of wool socks stuffed in his jacket pocket.

He stopped at the bottom step.

"I said the light stays on," he said. "I didn't say you had to sit under it."

"I couldn't sleep."

He came up, put a mug beside me, and handed me the socks.

The coffee was black and very strong.

I wrapped both hands around the mug and drank.

"Why are you out here?" I asked.

"Same as you."

"You have a bed."

"So do you." He sat on the top step with his back against the post. "She told me this morning you used to sleep out here in the summer."

"I did. Every summer until I was seventeen."

"Hmm."

"Why do you talk like that?"

"Like what?"

"You say about four words at a time."

The corner of his mouth moved again.

"Your grandfather said the same thing."

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