I stayed in there a long time, looking through the boxes. Clothes, shoes, old schoolwork, flyers for shows. Ancient history. I opened the window and smoked cigarettes like we used to back in high school. I’d slept in this room hundreds of times, woken up to the view of the oaks out the back window and Danielle in bed beside me, her scratchy legs kicking me as she dreamed. I knew the contours of the furniture in the dark, the texture of the walls. Everything was the same except for the gray envelope on Danielle’s old marble-top bureau. She wasn’t coming back.

I set the unicorn on the bed and started loading boxes into my car. Once they were all piled in the trunk, I went back to Danielle’s room for the gray envelope. I searched the house until I found Sally, in the TV room on the third floor. She was sitting in the middle of the carpet, boxes scattered all around her. She was weeping quietly.

“Sally,” I said, knocking on the open door.

She looked up.

“I don’t know if I could ever pay it back,” I said.

“It’s a gift. I don’t expect you to. I don’t want anything in return.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. I just wanted her to know I knew.

“Okay, so I do,” she said. “I want you to do something good with your life. And maybe stay in touch. It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“No, it’s not too much to ask.”

“So you’ll take it?”

I nodded.

“Good,” she said.

She stood and came to me, put her arms around me. I hugged her back. Her child was dead. She didn’t have to do this for me. She didn’t have to think about me at all, but she was. Maybe that was a kind of love.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

She walked me to the front door and kissed me on the cheek.

Behind the wheel, I eased the car out of River Oaks. It was getting dark. The outside air vibrated around me. Cicadas whined in the trees, and a slow wet breeze signaled summer beginning. The city felt gentle and open. I cruised west on Memorial, taking the curves through the golf course. The reflective stripes of runners’ shoes flashed along the trail. At the Loop I entered the on-ramp. I remembered driving this way with Audrey, that night after the funeral. It seemed impossibly long ago, and innocent. We were on our way to buy coke; we were sad and we wanted to feel better.

I veered onto the Northwest Freeway. I passed the tollway and kept driving, floating through the endless neighborhoods of identical houses, the culs-de-sac lined with progressively younger trees. At Fry Road the land emptied into darkness, no shape discernible beyond the white-lit lanes of the freeway. I parked along the shoulder and sat on the trunk of the car with a cigarette, studying the glow to the east that was my city. Nothing but gray light at the bottom of the sky. A truck’s wake washed over me, the force of air so strong I could have let it knock me down.