Twenty minutes later, a response. Not on the original post, but sent directly via private message.

Casper: Looks kind of cool. You going?

A connection. A link. Someone who read something I wrote and thought it worthy of a response, no matter how brief.

NowhereMan: Hadn't really thought about it. I don't get out much.

Which was true even before Maggie died. I preferred staying at home in my room, listening to music or playing my video games. Drove Maggie nuts.

Casper: Neither do I. So what's your damage?

What is my damage?

NowhereMan: I don't know. What treatments are you doing? Are you sick?

Casper: Cancer. Various treatments. Gets old after awhile.

The two of us message back and forth for the better part of two hours. I never ask her name and she doesn't ask mine, but I learn she's been sick for awhile and the treatments she's undergoing aren't working too well. I would feel sorry for her, but I get the impression pity is the last thing she wants.

Eventually, she says she has to go and she'll 'catch me around.' That's a good thing. Isn't it a good thing? Casper talks with the distant sort of aura that suggests she isn't big on making close friends. Then again, I've heard that said about me before, too.

Just as I'm about to close out the browser, another private message pops onto the screen. This one isn't from Casper, but someone with the username RoxWell. The subject line says nothing more than hi. Not sure if I should be weirded out someone is PM'ing me when I've made a whole one post on the site, but okay.

In the message are the first few lines of the Beatles' Nowhere Man. The sight of it makes my insides flip-flop. I know the words. Of course I do. And it's probably stupid to think no one else would get the reference of my username, but the fact that someone does makes me feel warm all over.

I respond with the next few lines, then click send and wait.

CHAPTER 5

Over the next few weeks, the house begins to empty. In my online for-sale ads, I didn't know what kind of prices to list for any of Maggie's stuff, so I put best offer. Pretty sure some of the offers I'm getting aren't at all anyone's best but, really, I just want this shit out of the house.

It hurts to look at how little a person's possessions mean when they're gone. I know I wanted to feel something, but now I'm not so sure. Grass is always greener on the other side or something.

A newlywed pair buys the dining set, and a couple of guys take the couches and coffee table. Maggie's bedroom furniture is trickier, because the bed has to be disassembled before anyone can get it out of there and I won't help. I can't stomach being in her room. Instead I stand in the hallway and listen to a father and son taking the bed to pieces, chatting away. I'm trying not to imagine Maggie's permanent satin-lined bed at the cemetery when my cell rings. No one is paying me any attention so I slip downstairs to answer it, knowing it's Corey by the ringtone.