Someone she had known nearly her entire life, someone I had walked past for twenty years without knowing his name belonged beside ours on the family tree.

At six that morning I went to make coffee and found the guest bed empty.

For a moment I was eleven again, angry about the extra plate, sure the man behind the fence had stolen something from me.

Then I heard scraping out in the backyard.

Lucas was stacking the firewood that had been left beneath the overhang.

He had put his old trousers and a patched jacket back on.

His borrowed coat hung on a fence post, neatly folded, as if he were afraid of ruining something that wasn’t his.