I looked at my suitcase. I looked at my son. I looked at the wall where Roland’s photograph still hung, the one from 1989, where he was laughing at something just out of frame. Derek, I said very quietly. Did you check whose name is on that ticket? He blinked just once, but I saw it. I don’t know what you’re talking about, he said.
I smiled. It was the calmst smile I had ever produced in my life, which surprised me because inside I was shaking. ‘Of course you don’t,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’ Then I picked up my suitcase, walked past them both, and sat down on Roland’s porch, and called my neighbor Dorothy, and thought very carefully about what I was going to do next.
Dorothy arrived within 15 minutes, still in her gardening gloves, which told me she had not stopped to take them off before walking over, which told me everything I needed to know about Dorothy Haynes. She sat down beside me on the porch steps without asking questions, which was another thing I loved about her.