Reset

In the days after the funeral, he'd had serious doubts about medical school.

He thought about Dad and Uncle Rick and Mom and Cat and now, in a different sense, Lucas. One by one, they'd disappeared, suddenly like Dad or slowly, painfully, sometimes too quietly to even notice. Like Cat.

He thought he'd be better off doing something at which he hadn't already completely, repeatedly failed.

But then, in the aftermath of the earthquake, he'd found himself running a makeshift Red Cross clinic out of a half-crumpled motor home just beyond the burned-out shell of the college library and realized that it was just time he started over.

He drove home one weekend in complete silence, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to glance over at the empty passenger seat. Deliberately, he parked in the street by the grassy curb and squinted up at the long, sloping drive. Hands in pockets, he crunched through the gravel and unlocked the front door, tossing his keys into the fake plant beside the cluttered shoe rack.

It took the better part of the following week to box things up, arrange for storage, and post ads online, but he managed alright on his own, and on the following Sunday night, he stood again in the foyer, keys in hand, staring at the crisp dust sheets ghosting over the sweeping banister. Caught in the faint draft from the open door, they fluttered limply, bathed in artificial moonlight.

He stepped outside and shut the door.