The concrete of the city soon gives way to an evergreen blur as he rounds the southern shore of Puget Sound and heads toward the Olympics. The water is the same churning gray as the sky. The mountaintops are lost to clouds. He turns the radio on and cycles through the stations and sings along briefly with Hank Williams before tuning in to the news that a Seattle-based tech company is lobbying for the creation of an omnimetal roadway that would power the city with the kinetic vibration of the traffic on it. He sees the omnimetal Teslas gliding through downtown and he knows about the Bullet monorail that just opened a Sea-Tac station, but he prefers to live low-tech and happily drives his old truck and would chuck his phone and laptop into the Pacific if he could get away with it.

He exits the 5 onto 101 and from there gets onto a country highway fenced by firs and blackberry thickets. The speakers in his truck are old and tinny enough to make his ears ache, so he punches the dial and settles into a silence broken by the occasional logging truck roaring by. He tips back his thermos and empties the last drops from it. There’s something about the sleepy gray of western Washington that makes ground Colombian beans as essential as oxygen.

Fog thickens as the grade of the road steepens. White tendrils wisp along the ditches and then swirl up to soak the forest. As he travels through this phantom zone, minutes haze by and his mind wanders. He glances at the passenger seat and lets out a gasp because a child sits there—his Mia. Then he blinks hard and the vision of his daughter dissolves into his backpack.

She’s always there with him, but he can escape his grief more easily than Nora, because he is farther from the reminders. He moved into a condo, but his ex-wife still lives in their old place and keeps their daughter’s room tidy, the carpet vacuum-striped, her clothes and stuffed animals sealed in Ziploc bags so they won’t get musty, giving the space the feel of an evidence locker.

He once suggested to her—during one of her deepest sadnesses—that she might have an easier time if she sold the house, if she sought out a fresh start elsewhere. She gave him a look of disgust and said, “This isn’t supposed to be easy.”