I won’t get into it all but when Amelia left and Edi died I felt like there wasn’t anything to build to, in regards to my life. It was just waning now. Just watching the leaves fall. I said that at a bar once and a guy I know said now was the time to do whatever I wanted, but I didn’t want to do what I wanted. I just wanted to feel at home somewhere. I didn’t say any of that, I just said yeah, I figure. But when you don’t want something out of yourself, when you ain’t got a direction to point, that’s when you just…that feeling is worse than loneliness. It’s sharper, more specific. It’s like getting gutted but not feeling a tinge of pain.

At this point in my life when I feel restless I drive down to the river in the night and stare at it. It just flows. It just keeps going east.

•••

It is hard to suffer in dignity in a small town. After Edi died, Amelia was careful to not buy wine at the local grocery. She never went out of the house until after seven or eight, simply to avoid the amount of people who would approach her, ask her how she was doing, and tell her how sorry they were. To even brush off these people would be considered crass, and despite her daughter’s death, people would have difficulty empathizing with her. Everyone offered endless condolences because they wanted to imagine themselves as good people and wanted to make Amelia feel better. Even if they didn’t, their intentions were pure, and that’s what mattered.

There really is nothing to say, I’m so sorry, but here I am, saying it.

Amelia drove thirty miles out to a gas station off highway 70 in order to buy her wine. She never drank more than one or two glasses, but she knew how gossip works. One person sees her buy wine, one bottle becomes two, someone flashes back to seeing her in the grocery store and imagines another bottle, and next thing she knows there is a breakfast discussion about her in a house she is unfamiliar with where people discuss her name with raised eyebrows. Social bloodshed.

She had to consider Barrett. In her own defensiveness she hadn’t considered much of his motives or feelings. She always had the vague idea that Barrett was a man that had to be protected. She stared at the number of objects stretching from her front door to her kitchen, leaving only a thin, narrow path. All this stuff. She sighed. She felt guilty about giving him the book. It’s his life. It’s not like he’s doing well. You can’t save anyone, anyway. People always find what they are looking for.

•••