The street was dark now, the yellow porch lights of Oak Street starting to flicker on one by one. I stood on the small wooden porch, pulling my coat tight against the cold air that smelled of woodsmoke.
Before I walked down the steps, I glanced back through the front window into the warm living room.
Carl was still asleep in his armchair, the pale light of a single lamp casting long shadows across the worn green carpet.
On the low coffee table near his chair sat a heavy, polished mahogany chessboard, its hand-carved pieces lined up in perfect order.
Through the window, the mahogany chessboard looked out of place in the simple room.
I stepped away from the window and focused on the whistling kettle. The small kitchen smelled faintly of old wood and toasted bread, a dry, quiet scent that seemed to belong to another decade. I took down a heavy green tea cup with a chipped base from the wooden shelf. It was a simple piece of stoneware, glazed in a dull forest green that had spiderweb cracks running through the inside from years of hot liquid.
