I took three slow steps across the worn yellow linoleum floor. The cold air from the open door followed him inside, smelling of damp pine leaves and the first frost of November.
He did not run to me, and I did not reach out to grab him, because my mind was spinning with the memory of the cold bronze marker in the Oakridge cemetery. I had paid four hundred dollars for that stone, and I had watched the men lower the small pine casket into the red clay myself.
We stood in the narrow hallway under the yellow light of the single ceiling bulb.
I reached out with one finger and touched the side of his cheek, right where a small grey smudge of dirt lay near his temple. His skin was warm and real, not the cold marble I had spent two years imagining.
“Who are you?” I whispered, my Southern drawl dragging out the vowels as if the slower I spoke, the more time I would have to understand.
“I am Euan,” he said, looking down at his sneakers.
One of his laces was missing, replaced by a piece of green garden twine tied in a double knot.
“Your father told me you went to sleep,” I said. “He told me the doctors tried everything at the clinic in Knoxville.”
Euan did not look up, but his small hand reached out and touched the hem of my apron.
“Daddy said I had to stay with the man,” he said.
I led him into the living room and sat him on the brown plaid sofa. The room was dark except for the light coming from the hallway, casting long shadows across the framed photographs on the mantel.
My hands shook so hard I had to sit on them to keep him from seeing.
