He said something about a favor. He said something about if it wouldn’t hurt you and would help the other person. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I told him to please go home.

He said he needed to talk to me, that nobody understood. I told him I didn’t want to do anything that would hurt him, but that he needed to go home right away.

I knew I had to be firm. I told him I was going to close the door. He hung his head. Then he looked up and looked into my eyes. Looked right into me. Everything changed in that moment. I saw how the rest of my life was going to be. I knew that I would always be lonely, and that I would always be scared. I told him to go home again and then I shut the door.

I don’t remember driving home. I just woke up the next morning in bed with Betty. Tracey was crying. It was dark. I put my hand on Betty and I moved against her and I put my chin in her neck. She squeezed my hand in her sleep. She moved it down between her legs and moaned. Maybe she was having a bad dream. It all came back to me suddenly, what I’d done the night before. I just closed my eyes. I didn’t want to think about it. I had to get up in thirty more minutes. I had to get up and fix myself some breakfast.

Some men showed up a few days later. One of them was short, with a red beard. His shirt was spattered with paint. He did all the talking. The other one just stood on the porch and looked around.

I let them in after they explained why they were there. They brought their tools in, and the linoleum in. I stayed in the bedroom while they hammered and sawed and nailed. I thought they never would get through.

Finally he knocked on the door and asked me if I wanted to come out and look at it. I went out and looked. The doors were hung and the new linoleum was down. They’d done a neat job, a good job. But I wanted them out of my house. I wrote him a check quickly, for the same price that Richard had named. They took his sawhorses. They said they could do other things: remodeling, build decks, paint my house. I thanked them and told them I didn’t need anything else right now. I didn’t ask them anything about Richard.