Halfway across the asphalt, I turned around.

The third-floor windows are wide and unkind at that hour.

I could see my own cubicle from below, the desk lamp still on, the white of the mug against the gray, the astronaut too small to see from that distance, which somehow made it worse.

I stood there with a cardboard box that had nothing in it and couldn’t make my legs carry me back through that side door.

So I put the box in the trunk and got in the car.