To the deck of the big gray house.
To the man in the dark blue bathrobe.
She stopped walking.
She stopped so suddenly that one of her grocery bags slipped out from under her arm and fell onto the gravel.
She didn’t pick it up.
She just stood there in the middle of my father’s driveway, in the fog, staring up at Brent Hollis.
And up on his deck, Brent set his coffee cup down on the railing.
Very slowly. Very carefully.
Like his hands had stopped working.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
The people in the garden kept picking. They hadn’t noticed. The teenage boys were still twisting off ears of corn. The toddler was still eating strawberries.
But I noticed. And Tyler noticed. And down at the end of the bean rows, my father straightened up and looked toward the driveway.
He noticed too.
