At twenty past eleven I walked home along the oak-lined sidewalk, keeping my head down against the wind.

At two fifteen that afternoon, Emily was sitting at the cedar table on our back patio with two girls from her high school track team.

Algebra books, yellow highlighters, and sheets of graph paper were spread all over the wood.

I stood in the kitchen by the open patio screen, drinking cold water from my half-liter stainless steel bottle.

I kept an eye on the backyard while my laptop sat open on the counter to an audit spreadsheet.

A loud metal clatter echoed across the shared driveway.