You saw the newspaper, in secret. Not each day but some days.

These people are killing us. Possibly, your mother meant the newspaper people. The TV people.

You are beginning to feel uneasy, at the window. You are beginning to wonder if indeed your father is actually in the car. And it is wrong of you to spy upon your father as it is wrong to spy upon your mother. Faces sagging like wetted tissue when they believe that no one is watching. Oh, you love them!

In the car Daddy is (probably) smoking. Maybe he brought a can of ale with him from the tavern. Maybe a bottle.

The bottles are more serious than the cans. The bottles—whiskey, bourbon—are more recent than the cans.

In the plastic recycling bin, glass bottles chiming against one another.

Daddy is not supposed to smoke. Daddy has been warned.

A spot on his lung two years before but a benign spot. High blood pressure.

More than once Daddy has declared that he has quit smoking—for the final time.

When Daddy smokes he coughs badly. In the early morning you are wakened hearing him. So painful, lacerating as if someone is scraping a knife against the inside of his throat.

Years ago when you were a little girl Daddy would come bounding into the house—Hey! I’m home.

Calling for you—Hey Vi’let Rue! Daddy is home.

Where’s Daddy’s best girl? Vi’let RUE!

That happy time. You might have thought it would last forever. Like a TV cartoon now, exaggerated and unbelievable.

Now Daddy is showing no inclination to come into the house. (Maybe he has fallen asleep, behind the wheel? A bottle in his hand, that is beginning to tip over and spill its contents . . . ) He has turned off the motor, at least. You are relieved, the poison-pale smoke has ceased to lift from the tailpipe.

He’s coming inside now. Soon.

There is a meal for Daddy, in the oven. Covered in aluminum foil.

Even when your mother must know that Daddy won’t be eating the supper she has prepared for him there is a meal in the oven which, next day, midday when no one is around, Mom will devour alone in the kitchen rarely troubling to heat it in the microwave. (You have seen her with a fork picking, picking, picking at the cold coagulated meat, mashed potatoes. You have seen your mother eating without appetite, swiftly picking at tasteless food.)

It is unnerving to you, the possibility that no one is in the car.

In the driveway, in the dark. Dim reflected light from a streetlight in the wet pavement.

No, there’s no one there!

Somehow, your father has slipped past you. You have failed to see him.

Or, your father has slumped over behind the wheel, unconscious. He has found an ingenious way to divert the carbon monoxide into the car while no one noticed . . .