Maybe Fabiola was right: he isn’t accustomed to things he can’t control.

Back in the kitchen, Fabiola sits at the table, looks in his eyes. She’s hard, unlike Jack. She smiles. Jack wonders if this is what simple folk do to pass the time: sit and stare at one another until a thought crosses their mind to start a conversation. Running her palm over the table, Fabiola tells him, “My husband crafted this table with his own two hands.”

Jack’s own two hands have never built anything. Almost never held a hammer. A screwdriver. He hasn’t mowed his own lawn or changed a tire. Hasn’t known labor since he was a kid. And even back then he wasn’t skilled at any of it. He paid people to do such things for him. Inside, he is going crazy with questions. It may be that Fabiola is crazy too. Maybe she is rubbing off on him. He thinks something is off about her. Saying she saw him in a dream. Maybe this is what loss does to a person. Regardless of social status, of money. It drives everyone to the brink. Over the edge. It breaks them. And Jack tries like hell to be polite, to gather his wits, get his bearings. Trying to be polite, he asks her, “Where did he acquire the lumber to build the table?”

“He ordered it. Then sawed and planed and smoothed it himself. He had a shop out back of the house.”

Running his palm over the table. Jack feels as if someone had beat his skull with a shovel. The coffee seemed to help at first. Now, well, Jack is having second thoughts.

“Where did your husband hone such a craft, a skill?”

“His father. He wanted him to be a carpintero, or what you Americans call a woodworker.”

Jack’s father never taught him anything. From the brief moments Jack was allowed to be around him, to be his son, he recalls a vile, unhappy man. Cursing and belittling his mother and him. With such a lacking fatherly example, it’s no wonder that Jack never really taught his own kids anything. He was always working. Any time he spent with them, he spent thinking about work. The teaching and sharing he left to his wife, Sarah.

Unable to take it any longer, at the mercy of all these thoughts and memories, Jack wants out of here. He has to get moving. And he tells her, “I really appreciate all your kindness, Fabiola—especially your taking me in and offering me a place to sleep, listening to my ramblings. But I need to get back on the road. I need to move forward.”

“I’ve packed you some bread and cheese. It’s all I have. And I’ve filled your bottles with water.”