It was silent now.

On the porch side table, Julian’s abandoned glass of scotch still sat, dark and full, catching the light.

I picked it up.

I carried it to the kitchen sink, and I poured the whole of it down the drain, and I rinsed the glass clean under the tap, and I set it in the rack to dry, and something about that small ordinary act, washing one glass in my mother’s kitchen, felt like the truest thing I had done all day.

The lawyers and the police and the locks had reclaimed the house in law.