ride home was only twelve minutes, but it felt longer because grief sat in the passenger seat the whole way.
Frank had been gone ten months.
Some mornings I still turned my head to tell him something before remembering there was no one in his chair.
He had not been a fancy man.
He drove the same truck for nineteen years and treated every strange noise like a personal negotiation.
He saved rubber bands around soup cans and coupons in a kitchen drawer.
He mended the storm door twice before admitting it needed replacing.
He could walk through a room and notice the loose screw, the uneven table leg, the curtain rod sagging on one side.
Then he would fix it quietly, as if leaving things better was just how a person paid rent on the earth.
He loved Kyle with the same steady patience.
And before there was even
