“Why stay on that long?”

“Fell in love with the stairs.” He looked past me at the maple, bare as a broom by now, the whole gray lot showing through its branches.

“Ask me again come spring.”

He tore the sandwich in half and slid one half across the wax paper, and I took it, because otherwise he wasn’t going to eat it.

Then he pushed the window shut with the flat of his hand, and the latch caught.

“Eat,” he said.