Another landslip while I was gone. Looking at the space where ground used to be is a kick in the chest. My rock is gone. Slipped into the sea without me. By the far corner of the house, the cliff’s edge is only three feet or so from the path that wraps around and leads to the back door. At its widest I have maybe six or seven feet of backyard left. My heart’s not beating right. It beats lumps and gurgles and it hurts.

Midafternoon. No clouds. I feel exposed. I feel like I’m seconds away from falling.

Wouldn’t it be just the worst, like an O. Henry story? My parents finally arrive to bring me back to the mainland and they slip off the side with clumps of dirt and rocks before they can get to the door.

Inside I don’t know what to do with myself. I stick the chicken in the fridge. That’s the one thing that has to be done. Then there’s nothing. The red numbers on the microwave stare at me and I stare back. Lolly set the time five minutes fast. She was like that, efficient even in retirement. I stare and listen for house sounds but there’s no noise inside or out. No more explosions. Nothing. There’s nothing here. My heart’s not beating right.

Up the stairs to Lolly’s room. She’s not coming back. She’s not coming back. I turn the knob and walk across the floor. It doesn’t matter that my feet make an impression on the soft gray carpet. She’s not here. She’s not coming back. She didn’t want me but she was all that I had. There are more red eyes in Lolly’s room—the DVD player, her TV, her alarm clock. She was into gadgets. Her life was digital. She didn’t trust the things I made in the oven and on the stove. When she lived alone she ate at the Psychedelicatessen or heated something up in the microwave. I had to get my head around the difference between her reliance on electronic things and my mother’s raw-paleo-whole-foods-clean-eating approach, which Lolly found a clichéd rip-off. Mom didn’t think that you could call something that came out of a microwave a meal. Lolly thought of those shortcuts as liberation. She wanted to be efficient and clean, just add water. She bought the appliances that promised to save her time. Time for what? Time to grow old the way she wanted to? When I think about her, I always feel like there wasn’t enough time. If I’d had a few more weeks I could have figured out how to be what she needed. She was just too quick for me.