‘I cleaned up.’ She leans against the door frame, watching me slice the bagel.

‘There’s another one of these. I’ll leave it for you. In case you get hungry.’ I keep my hand flat on the bagel, steadying it so I don’t make a mess of it. ‘In case the sandwich turns out not to be enough. Before the ice cream, I mean.’

‘Sure.’ She leans back, into the lounge room, and shouts down the stairs, ‘Cedar, you eaten yet? You want me to fix you something?’

Just as I’m about to mention the donut, and the remission of his sentence, he calls out, ‘Smores.’ He gives the idea a second or two, to see if it’ll fly. ‘Okay, PB and J.’

Lacy watches me open the tub of guacamole and smear some on my bagel. ‘You bought all that at the Merc when you’re going into Anchorage anyway?’

‘I wanted it for lunch. And lunch is now.’

She folds her arms. ‘Like my dad always says, you pay for convenience.’

Merc cheese-and-jalapeno bagels. Specific to the Merc and she’s complimented them before, twice that I can remember.

She says nothing more. And I want her to say nothing more because the bagels – bagels bought for her – have already been wrong in two ways and I could do without a third.

I tell her I need to get to the agency, so I’ll take my bagel with me and eat it in the van. I go to jam the bagel into a plastic school sandwich box of Cedar’s. It doesn’t fit. I wrap it in a couple of sheets of paper towel.

It’s only once I get to the van that I remember the trip isn’t just to visit McCord’s. I have shipping to do and printed shipping labels back inside, at the computer. I stop, take a breath, take a bite of the bagel. The rain has cleared, at least. The clouds have taken their drizzle further down the Turnagain, towards Anchorage.

Three labels, three deluxe tool cabinets soon on their way to happy owners. Merc bagels paid for ten times over, ice cream paid for too.

I leave the bagel on the seat and duck in through the basement door, which is around the back near the computer. I can hear Cedar’s voice upstairs while I’m running through the label details, checking everything’s right, not for the last time. He’s in the kitchen, telling his mother something, but I can’t make out the words.

The drive out of Girdwood takes me past the site of the accident. I missed two months of driving and then, before I forced myself to break the habit, found myself checking for the skidmarks every time I passed. They are still there but have lost their freshness. They’re not tar-black anymore and their edges have blurred.

Three bites of bagel and my mouth is dry and the only water in the van is Cedar’s.