Everything was covered in dust. Dropping her duffel with a muted thud on the carpet, Gene ran her finger along the dark wood surface of the hall table, leaving a shiny track in the matte film. The whole house felt muffled and still, greeting her like a stranger.

Everything was silent.

A loneliness she thought she had wrestled down and escaped in her travels seemed to pounce on her from the quiet shadows of the room, making her inhale sharply.

A rolling carousel-world of color and sound, spices and strange faces passing by every day for the last year had, she thought, numbed, and eventually buried her grief. But her first footfall over the threshold had raised the same specters in her mind, in her breast.

Jim was still gone. Nothing could bring him back.

She would never hear his low voice, full of humor, or whispered caresses, never feel his touch, the warmth of him at her back in the small hours of the morning.

He was gone.

She was more alone than ever, with a year of silenced calls between her and her family yawning like a chasm that was difficult to bridge. What would she say?

It would all be the same platitudes, empty words of comfort, the same remonstrances, questions of where she had been, why she hadn’t responded. But she just…. couldn’t.

She hadn’t had it in her.

She didn’t know if, even now, she had it in her.

As if a sadistic, or, depending on how you looked at it, loving angel of fate had heard the thought and decided to test her, the phone in her pocket vibrated softly against her leg.

Soft light reflected off her taut face as she slid it out, reading the brief message.

Her throat tightened, her eyes burning as tears blurred the screen.

Mom: “Baby, I love you. Come home. We’ve got you.”