The rest of that morning I put dishes away and answered the phone twice, and I couldn’t tell you who called.

At two in the afternoon I went upstairs to change the sheets in Ethan’s room, because that was something I could do.

The bed was made.

Corners tucked.

That was worse than if he had left it unmade.

His laptop was gone, and the alarm clock, and the good charger.

What he’d left behind was a shelf of paperbacks, a half jar of pennies, and a windbreaker on the hook.

I pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser to see if anything in there needed washing, and found a strip of paper wedged under the runner.