Months ago, when I was not there, Kyle stepped inside my house, and sat on my bed, and spoke to my daughter, and walked around my bedroom, and fell asleep on the couch in my living room. He had been just one teenage body among dozens that night. And yet, somehow, his scent still lingered. In closets, in cupboards, in the corners of rooms. Sometimes it was enough to make me lean against a countertop and close my eyes. Whenever I drove past the park, I imagined the ruins of his tent hidden somewhere in the brush. I would lie in bed some nights thinking about how easy it would be to get up, put on my shoes, and walk the six blocks through the darkness, through the overgrowth, and to crouch down amongst his things, his old records and books, and whatever remained, but I could never bring myself to do it. It was like a scream at night which no one goes to investigate.

I did stop hearing The Hum eventually, though I was still hearing it days after they had officially decreased the pressure in the pipeline. It stayed with me like a phantom limb—three days, six days, nine days after, albeit fainter and fainter, until eventually, I woke up one morning, and it was gone. I lay in bed, listening to the birds out my window. I focused and strained in the hope of hearing any trace of it in the background, the faintest vibration, but I couldn’t. It felt a little disorienting, at first. Like the world was missing the colour yellow, or the taste of salt. There was some register of experience I could no longer access. Though gradually I became accustomed to its absence, as we do with all things we lose.

I started sleeping again. I started setting my alarm in the morning again. I started jogging, and flossing, and checking my emails again. I erased the hour of vile messages from strangers on my voicemail. I started making the bed. I started buying raspberries and tulips. I started listening to podcasts about astronomy, urban planning, the Black Death, the history of medicine, gay conversion therapy, bees, the Harlem Renaissance, paganism, Dolly Parton. I started making meals with more than three constituent ingredients. I started smiling at my neighbours. I started talking to Paul—civil and amicable check-ins at first, and then longer and more involved conversations about current events, our days, about the ways in which we had hurt one another, and the ways in which we might find our way back to loving each other in the way we once had.