For Seven Years I Sent Forty Thousand Dollars Every January, Until Emma Finally Spoke

I didn’t go upstairs to knock on her door.

I left the house and walked three blocks down the sidewalk to the market.

I unlocked the front glass doors and turned on the overhead fluorescent lights.

The store was completely empty.

I took a push broom from the closet and swept the scuffed linoleum aisles, pushing the dust out the back door into the alley.

Then I went to the back office and sat down at my wooden desk.

My hands rested flat on its scuffed surface.