“I am going to judge you by what you do on Thursday morning.”

Ethan wiped his cheeks with the back of his sleeve and took a slow, heavy breath.

“Fair enough.”

He reached out and picked up the blue spiral care logbook from the side table, laying it beside his printed weekly schedule on the coffee table.

The afternoon sun shifted through the window pane, casting a long square of light across the two papers, illuminating the neat lines of blue ink where June’s temperature readings were recorded hour by hour.

By two o’clock on Thursday afternoon, the sun had cleared the winter clouds over my mother’s front porch.