Becky wore her AC/DC T-shirt, her frayed jean shorts, and her dusty sneakers. She had Mom’s clothesline in her hand and was working on a knot. I stepped up onto a tree stump beside her and balanced on one leg.

“How do you know how to make knots? There’s no internet,” I said.

“Rodney’s Boy Scout book.”

“You always were the smartest one.”

She smiled and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks.” Most beautiful too.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She regarded the girl and boy. Both holding sticks, they poked at a grated drain in the back corner of the yard. “I wish you wouldn’t have asked that,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to make you sad.”

“Just tell me.”

She held up the rope, smiling and showing me what she made. She slipped the noose around my neck. “It’s your fault.” She reached out and pushed me off the stump.

*  *  *

I woke up startled, yanking my head upright, snapping a thread of drool. I was in Judy’s recliner, my thighs and arms spread like a drunk.

Judy lay on her back in the metal bed with the rails up, her hands in a semi-clench of the white sheet near her chest. Like a scared kid. Her mouth was open, wide open, exposing her top row of teeth. Her chest lifted and dropped. Still alive. Thank you, Judy.

The room was bathed in the flickering glow of the television I’d left on mute. Dark outside, but it was too warm in here to fall back asleep. I had been instructed not to turn the AC below seventy-six. Judy liked it balmy.

I missed Emily. I missed her as if she were one of my limbs, and the phantom throb of her absence was deep, itchy, and maddening. I missed pressing my lips to her warm soft cheek, smelling her sweaty hair, holding her itty-bitty toes, listening to her random spoken thoughts.

I limped to the bathroom to pee, then to the kitchen to check the Judy To-Do List. My bones ached from sleeping in the recliner, my brain felt raw, hungover.

Taking care of the dying was exhausting. It should have been easy. They didn’t want food and they slept more than an infant. But it was exhausting. All that piddling, checking their breathing, setting your alarm according to their medicine, pestering them to drink, knowing you couldn’t leave.

I sat at Judy’s kitchen table with my phone and pulled up the local news. My heart jumped at the first story. Another break-in. Yesterday afternoon, sometime between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3:50 p.m.