She finished her sandwich and drank a cup of black coffee. For some reason she thought of Gabriel, and how much he’d enjoyed her coffee. She had to stop thinking about him. She’d almost cost him his life. She’d destroyed his peace of mind and Sara’s, subjected them both to cameras and reporters and harassment. It was not really a surprise that they weren’t speaking to her anymore. Even if she’d gone the last mile defending them, trying to make up for her lack of foresight, it didn’t erase the damage she’d already done.

She was bored to death. The house was pretty. She’d made improvements—she’d redecorated Roberta’s old room and had the whole place repainted. She’d put up new curtains and bought new furniture. But the house was cold and empty.

Back when her father was alive, it still held echoes of his parents, of him. Now, it was a reminder of old tragedies, most especially her father’s death and Roberta’s.

She carried her coffee into the living room and looked around her. She ought to sell it and move into an apartment in San Antonio. She didn’t have a pet, not even a dog or cat, and the livestock her father had owned were long gone. She had nothing to hold her here except a sad attachment to the past, to dead people.

But there was something that kept her from letting go. She knew what it was, although she didn’t want to remember. It was Gabriel. He’d eaten here, slept here, comforted her here. It was warm with memories that no other dwelling place would ever hold.

She wondered if she couldn’t just photograph the rooms and blow up the photos, make posters of them, and sacrifice the house.

Sure, she thought hollowly. Of course she could.

She finished her coffee and turned on the television. Same old stories. Same programs with five minutes of commercials for every one minute of programming. She switched it off. These days she only watched DVDs or streamed movies from internet websites. She was too antsy to sit through a hundred commercials every half hour.

She wondered why people put up with it. If everyone stopped watching television, wouldn’t the advertisers be forced to come up with alternatives that compromised a bit more? Sure. And cows would start flying any day.

That reminded her of the standing joke she’d had with Grier and Gabriel about cows being abducted by aliens, and it made her sad.

Outside, she heard the truck go flying past her house. It didn’t even slow down. Must be somebody looking at Gabriel’s house. She wondered if he’d put it on the market without bothering to put a for-sale sign out front. Why not? He had no real ties here. He’d probably moved up to Wyoming to live near Sara.