Each flicker takes me back to a random fall day back home. A Saturday. Game day. The ubiquitous sound of football forever on in the background on fall weekends. The sound of home.

Zander’s mom was cooking something or other in the Crock-Pot. Something mouthwatering, tantalizing from the smell wafting downstairs into the family room from the kitchen. Every so often she would get up and go stir something new into it. In those moments, Zander and I would sneak a glance. A sly smile. He would kiss me. Every cell in my body would light up. And then she’d come back down the stairs from monitoring the dinner.

And we’d rush back to our PG positions on the sofa.

A giggle in it.

A sweet deception.

And the whole afternoon would go that way.

The Huskers or the Packers on the TV, depending on the day. Saturday or Sunday. Outside, the ground covered in snow three feet deep. An early blizzard that fall, blanketing the earth in white until spring. A winter wonderland delivered early.

And to be in love, in that moment, with those plays and flags and penalties being called in the background, and the smell of some delicious thing in the Crock-Pot . . . was to be on a kind of Midwestern heaven on earth.

And, here, staring into the fire, into the same kind of flames, with all that gone, in this lonely place . . . I could cry that I lost it.

My eyes want to cry, they are welling up, trying very hard to make me human. To give in. To surrender to it.

But I won’t do it.

I won’t let it happen.

It wasn’t my fault.

None of it was my fault.

I swear.

But to go back to it, just for a moment. To rest there, with the whistles and the play clock, with the stew in the kitchen, with the stolen kisses on the sofa . . . I need to rest there, in that time, for just a bit longer.

I close my eyes and imagine it.

My sweetest Zander.

I am with you still.

Chapter 38

Monday morning the construction team is back, in all their flannel and denim glory. To take away the silence of this space. To suddenly turn this dirge into a cacophony of activity, nails hammered, boards sawed. Every once in a while, someone yelling over the sound of the drill.

I could see myself, in another time, hating these sounds and these men running rampant all over the place. A proprietary kind of hate. But now, the sound of them calling to each other, the sound of their shovels, the sound of their nails being hammered . . . all of it washes over me like a tonic. They’re here. They’re back. They exist. This exists. This place exists.

I exist.

I am not just some dream conjured up.

I am a real person.

A live girl!

I don’t mind if my Ancient Aliens analysis of the mummies being prepared for their space travel is interrupted by a bang here, a drill there. This is all just part of being a human. This is all just part of being a community! Yes. A community of people working in this place together for the same goal. Construction. A guesthouse. Progress.