By seven, the pot roast was heating the kitchen, but Cole had barely touched his plate. We sat on the sofa in the living room with the television showing a local news broadcast, the volume turned down low. He sat with his hands clasped between his knees, staring straight ahead at the screen without actually watching the pictures flicker across the glass.
I watched his profile in the blue light of the television. He had a small smudge of grease near his temple that he had missed when he washed up, and his shoulders were hunched forward. When I reached over to touch his knee, his muscle was tight, completely unyielding under his denim jeans.
“You want some tea?” I asked.
“I am fine, Ev,” he said.
“You have been quiet since four.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand, his fingers tracing the collar of his shirt. “Just thinking about a transmission at the shop. It is giving me some trouble.”
“The blue truck?”
“The blue one,” he said.
He stood up then, his heavy work boots creaking against the floorboards. He picked up his leather jacket from the armchair where he had tossed it earlier.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I need to oil the hinges on the garage door before the frost hits,” he said.
The back door clicked shut behind him, and through the kitchen window, I watched the yellow bulb of the detached garage flicker on.
I was folding laundry in the basket when the yellow headlights of a Buick sedan swept across our living room wall. The car pulled up to the curb, its engine idling with a familiar, muffled rattle before the lights went black.
