One thing that helped—an accidental stillness. How to survive? Do not remarry at once. Don’t rush out and find “new friends.” Some folks will foolishly buy a pet shop puppy the day they back over their beloved old beagle snoozing deaf in the sun-warmed drive.

“Give it a rest, Hartley.” So folks said to me, touching my silvered temples and strained face as if these were geological formations that deserved their own postcard. I wondered what “it” meant. I’ve begun to know.

With assistance from the lady real estate agent who helped Mother find her place one village away, I came upon the very house I had long pictured. My expertise at packing others quickly came in handy. I learned to unpack, myself, so slowly.

When I leave this house here, I’ll be crated out (by others).

Living in this little town, owner of two birdbaths regularly filled and used by multitudes for free, I do not go out more than two consecutive evenings. I linger with my missing ones. I have bought a porch rocker apiece, as the portraits of Marco, Gideon, and Robert, and six more of my missing. By the time I lured Angie down here to see my new-old place, she walked around the L-shaped porch and, poking a chair, announced, “Your rogue’s gallery. A circle, the old familiars, hunh?” Placing her hand on the back of each rocker in turn, pushing it to see if it wobbled somewhat in character, she named every boy, a chair at a time.

She scared me, smiling. Got them all. “Perfect Double Jeopardy score,” I told her but felt half undone. I settled on Gideon.

She next played musical friends. “Marco sits most comfortably, but Robert’s throne’s the prettiest by far, just not built for the long run, is it. Showboat.”

As someone always lucky in his friends, I’d daily rush to our table for company, today’s gossip political and sexual, consumed like more caffeine. (I all but got a headache if I missed two days’ good trash and bustle.)

But now I was past forty-seven. That age in itself makes it easier to sit alone here for almost fifteen minutes. My sex drive—once the Indy 500 every weekday—has recanted to mere spirited Sunday drives. I remembered my grandfolks’ weekly puttering tour of all land they owned, no rush, it’d be there.

If I could not spend time with my Robert, Ansel, Gideon, Marco—and if Angie was off traveling more and more lately—it might as well be me here. I would be interesting, at least, for having known those mythic others. This whole house had cost what one ghetto studio-apartment would. Now, suddenly absolved from nursing duty, I was free to relearn writing. But what to write about, but them?