He had bought the safety gear for a man who wasn’t there.

And here was the thing that turned the tilt into a free fall, the thing I did not say aloud to the kind old clerk but felt arrive in me whole and cold: if Zachary never came, and Zachary swore he never came — then where was that vest?

It had not been in the garage.

It had not been among his things.

An expensive adult flotation vest, bought that very morning, had simply never turned up, not in six years.