By eleven, Luke had returned from his morning rounds at the concrete yard on the south side of Oakhaven. He sat in the green armchair by the window, the television playing a local news segment about the county fair while he rotated his gold wedding band with his thumb. I moved around the room with a yellow dust cloth, wiping the wooden frame of the television and the glass front of the bookcase.
“I was tidying the linen closet upstairs this morning,” I said, pausing slightly before I spoke.
He did not look up from the screen, where a tractor was pulling a heavy sled through the dirt. His thumb continued its slow, rhythmic circle around the gold wedding band, the skin beneath it pale and pressed flat.
“There is a locked gray box on the top shelf, behind the extra winter blankets,” I said, stepping closer to the window. “I did not know we kept a lockbox up there.”
