He did not answer, and I did not call him back.

By ten fifteen, I was home with my work shirt smelling of cardboard dust and the last of the stockroom’s cold air clinging to it.

Dad was in the living room, sorting mail into two piles on the coffee table.

I stopped at the shelf beside the television.

A yellowed photograph leaned behind a row of paperbacks, its lower corner curled forward.

It showed Dad with three other men beside an old band van.