I hadn’t called him.
Claire had.
I heard his old truck in the driveway, that rattle it makes when it idles. I heard the front door open. I heard his footsteps in the hall, slow and heavy.
He came in without speaking.
My father is sixty-eight. He’s a retired electrician, tall and a little stooped now, with big hands covered in old scars from forty years of wires and fuse boxes. He wears the same tan canvas jacket every fall. My mother used to say he was the quietest man in three counties and she’d married him to have someone to talk at.
Ezoic
He stopped in the doorway of the living room.
His eyes went to the hole by the fireplace. Then the one by the hallway. Then, slowly, down to the floor.
To the mirror.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“I know,” I said quietly.
