So Asher willed himself to drift outside his own mind and heart and everything he had known for all these years and he kept repeating Justin’s name in his mind. He pushed himself against the door with such force that the impact knocked Zelda away, but did not break the chain. She tried to slam the door shut just as his shoulder made contact again. This time the chain broke and the door flew open and he was in Zelda’s good, familiar house that always smelled like bacon grease and fresh coffee.

The door had knocked her back so that she had fallen onto the coffee table. There was a great crash of breaking things; the large orange ashtray she had kept twenty years past her smoking husband’s death, the iridescent candy dish that had belonged to her great-grandmother. Once Asher had held the dish up to the sunlight and watched the milky colors change within its curves like something sanctified.

Asher saw the gash beneath Zelda’s eye, a thin line of blood rising. He felt a shudder escape his throat at the understanding that the edge of the door had struck her. The nausea of guilt washed down his torso.

Zelda put her hand up to the cut, moaned, then her fingers drifted down to clutch at her lower back. She drew in a great gulp of air.

Asher wanted to help her up, to help her. Yet he knew he could not.

You’re like a son to me, she had said, once.

Now Zelda put her hand out in front of her but Asher turned and moved down the hallway lined with framed photographs. Lydia’s school pictures. Their wedding portrait, Asher’s arms encircling her waist as he stood behind her. Like a different life he had lived ages ago. Then: baby pictures of Justin. Asher felt so dizzy he reached out and steadied himself against the wall.

“Justin!”

Music from an old movie played on a television down the hall.

Asher heard Zelda let out another moan. His name seeped from her: “Asher. Please.”

Justin lay in the blue glow of the television, that eerie light flickering around the room. Apparently he had fallen asleep next to Zelda, watching television. On screen Ava Gardner was throwing back her head to laugh at something Richard Burton had said while palm trees swayed behind them. Justin was on his back, one arm above his head, the other resting on his chest in a tightened fist. The way he always slept.

Asher had not seen him in two weeks, an eternity. He longed to stretch out here beside his son and go to sleep. He was so exhausted. But he couldn’t stop now.