I watched him cut the crust off his toast with his butter knife, careful and in no hurry.

He was twenty-eight, but sitting in that corner of the kitchen he still looked to me like the boy who used to read encyclopedias under the hall lamp.

“Your old high school friend Marcus called the house Tuesday,” I said.

“He wanted to know if you were coming home for the ten-year reunion.”

Evan laid his knife down next to his plate.

“Marcus lives in Columbus these days,” Evan said.

“He said the committee was mailing out the final directory this week,” I said.

“Directories take a while to print,” Evan said, lifting his coffee cup.

He didn’t say another word about Marcus, and he didn’t explain why his return ticket kept him in Oak Ridge until the second week of November.

The public library lobby smelled of winter floor wax and damp raincoats when I walked past the return desk at two.

Clara, who’d been at the circulation counter since my first year as a clerk back in ’94, waved me over with a little blue paper booklet.

“The reunion committee left these this morning for the local history display,” Clara said.

“Did they bring a lot?” I asked.

“Three stacks of fifty,” Clara said, resting her palms on the oak counter.