How to spend the days, the long afternoons waiting for Daniel to come home from work. Filling the birdfeeder. Elbow on the windowsill, hand on my chin, idle mind, watching the juncos pick through the seed. Riding my bike around this gently-rolling town, shopping at markets filling my paniers with vegetables for soup. Slow soup.

And the library. I found who built this house, and when he died, and where he is buried. Mr. Sidney Coxworth. And his wife, Mary, did she make soup here too? And did she stand here, outside the door, with her hands pressed on her sides, taking a break from the kitchen, the laundry, the garden? I will grow the garden too, Mary, it will grow like it did under your care. I picked the seeds from a catalogue and they are coming in the mail, just the way that you would have. I wash Daniel's thick work socks, dirty overalls, the way you did Sidney's, because I know he would have overalls to mend, with stray screws in the pockets.