Carl’s window was dark.
Two nights earlier, a nurse had called to tell me he had passed away peacefully. I had expected sorrow. What I felt instead was a hollow disbelief, as though he had stepped out of a room and might return at any moment with one of his dry observations.
Now the dark window seemed less like an ending than an accusation.
He had known me my entire life.
I had known him for eleven Thursdays.
I pressed my palm against the cold glass of the entrance door.
“What did you do, Carl?” I whispered.
The building gave no answer.
At three in the morning, I drove north.
The map led away from the highway, through sleeping towns and stretches of forest where my headlights seemed too weak against the darkness. Carl’s cabin stood beside Lake Verity, a place I had never heard mentioned by either him or Aunt Nora.
