The porch light was off, and the kitchen window was lit.

Victoria came out before I reached the second step.

She wasn’t wearing a coat.

“It’s a fever monitor,” I said.

“You plug it in and it reads her temperature from any room in the house.

That’s all it does.”

She looked down at the box, then up at me, and pressed both hands flat against her waist.

Then she took the box out of my hands, walked to the end of the path, and flung it into the grass by the mailbox.