Published October 1, 2026 · Changes & removed material →
Work in progress · A new chapter every Sunday.
Ethan lifted the tarp to make room for his bag.
“Whose chair?”
“Mrs. Forester’s.”
“And the boxes?”
“Kevin’s.”
Maya leaned over the side of the truck.
“Is any of this yours?”
“The truck.”
“What’s Mrs. Forester paying you?” Maya asked.
“Nothing.”
“A pizza,” Ethan said.
“She offered.”
“That’s the standard rate. One pizza.”
“For any amount of furniture?”
“Fixed nationally.”
Maya looked from the chair to the boxes. “You just do this for anyone?”
“Yep,” Ethan said.
Luke shut the tailgate. “She needed the chair moved.”
The hike had been his idea: a short loop up to the rocks above the reservoir, then back to help Ethan get ready for Sophie’s party. They had driven twenty minutes out of town. He wanted a few hours outside with his friends before the day filled up.
“We’ll be back by ten,” he said.
“The cake’s being delivered at ten thirty.”
“We’ll be back by ten.”
“I’m just telling you about my day.”
Maya looked up the slope.
“You said there was a path.”
“There is a path,” Luke said.
Ethan followed her gaze. “That’s a suggestion at best.”
Maya started through the trees. Luke shouldered his pack and followed.
The trail was narrow but familiar, damp leaves giving way to roots and exposed stone. Through the trees, the reservoir caught the morning sun. Luke liked the weight of his pack and the ordinary effort of putting one foot above the other.
Behind him, Ethan complained that a short hike should be measured horizontally. Maya told him he could take it up with the hill.
Luke grinned and waited for them at the turn. They’d had some version of this conversation every time they came here. He’d been looking forward to it since he suggested the hike.
Near the top, the trail curved beneath a broad shoulder of rock. A deep cleft divided it from the face beside it, and a fallen slab lay across the gap. From the trail it looked like an overhang. Farther in, where the sides drew closer and the slab shut out the sky, it was almost a cave. The ground beneath it was dry and level, with room for all three of them near the opening.
Maya sat and unwrapped a sandwich.
“It’s nine in the morning,” Ethan said.
“I’ve been up since five.”
“That doesn’t change what time it is.”
She handed him one. He sat down beside her.
Luke walked farther beneath the overhang. The air cooled against his face. He ducked beneath a dip in the ceiling and looked into a shallow recess where pale roots hung from a crack. It went no farther. Just stone, above him and on three sides.
“Nothing needs carrying in there,” Ethan called.
“I’m checking.”
He found a flat stretch, set down his pack, and lay back with it beneath his head.
At the opening, Ethan was explaining why a sandwich cut diagonally contained more food. Maya was asking him to show his work.
Luke closed his eyes.
The last few days kept coming back whenever he had a quiet minute. The intersection. Avery on the wall. Each time he went over them, he found something else he couldn’t explain.
At the opening, Ethan was still defending the sandwich. Luke listened until Maya made him laugh.
The stone was cool beneath his shoulders. Wind moved the leaves beyond the opening without reaching him. He could hear his friends, but neither of them needed an answer.
For a while, he felt entirely himself.
“Luke?”
He opened his eyes. Maya stood a few feet away, holding the last sandwich.
“Want this?”
“In a minute.”
She looked at him, then put it on top of his pack.
“All right.”
She went back to Ethan. Luke closed his eyes again.
When they finally stood to leave, he was reluctant to sit up. Nothing hurt. He wasn’t even particularly tired. It just felt good to be there.
Ethan checked the time at the opening.
“Nine thirty-two.”
“Plenty of time,” Luke said.
“For a path, yes.”
They dropped Maya off and made it to Ethan’s house at precisely 10:01.
* * *
“Uncle Luke. Tell her.”
Luke still had Sophie’s present under his arm.
“Tell her what?”
“That bluebirds like purple.”
Across the table, a girl wearing a plastic crown shook her head. “They’re blue.”
“That’s the bird,” Sophie said. “Not its house.”
Six wooden birdhouses stood among paper plates of paint.
“I don’t think birds care much about the color.”
Sophie looked at him with the disappointment of someone whose lawyer had changed sides.
“These are fashion birds.”
“Oh. You didn’t say that.”
Ethan took the present from Luke. Sophie was reaching for the purple paint when Luke noticed the green streak on her wrist.
He wet a cloth at the kitchen sink. When he came back, she held out her arm without being asked. He wiped the paint away.
He liked knowing what to do.
Sophie handed him a bottle of purple paint with its cap stuck on.
He opened it.
“Small amounts.”
She nodded with no intention of agreeing.
A boy came tearing through the dining room behind her.
The cake tipped.
It slid off the edge of the table, made half a turn in the air, and landed frosting-first on the floor. White icing flattened beneath it.
Luke’s hand shot toward it.
There was nothing to catch.
The cake sat on the table. Sophie was still waiting for the paint.
“Uncle Luke?”
He handed her the bottle.
Same purple letters. Same yellow flowers. Clean floor.
Ethan passed behind him with a stack of paper plates.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
Luke picked up the cake.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting it away from the kids.”
“They’re everywhere.”
“Exactly.”
He set it on the kitchen counter, well away from the edge, and went back to help Ethan fill the favor bags. Each got a little notebook with a birdhouse on its cover. Luke tied one bag badly enough that Sophie untied it and did it herself.
Between bags, he glanced into the kitchen. The cake stayed where he had put it.
Then he went into the kitchen for tape.
A juice carton tipped against the cake board.
The cake twisted sideways off the counter. It hit the open dishwasher door and split across the rack, white frosting driven between the metal prongs.
Luke heard the rack rattle.
He grabbed the cake.
The carton was upright. The dishwasher was shut.
He stood in the kitchen holding an undamaged birthday cake against his chest.
The first time, it had fallen off the table.
He had moved it.
“Luke?”
Ethan stood in the doorway.
“What?”
“I feel like the cake has hired security.”
Luke looked around. The top of the refrigerator was empty except for a cereal box. He moved the box and lifted the cake into its place.
“Okay. It’s safe there.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was deciding between several things.”
“Keep them to yourself,” Luke said.
Ethan nodded. “That was one of them.”
Sophie appeared beside him and looked up.
“It’s my birthday. Why do you get to hide the cake?”
“So nobody knocks it over,” Luke said.
“You could just tell them.”
Luke looked at Ethan.
“She’s got a point,” Ethan said.
Luke went back to the birdhouses. Sophie needed green paint washed off her wrist. A favor bag had split. Somebody had painted the inside of a house and wanted to know how long the bird would have to wait.
Whenever Luke looked toward the refrigerator, the cake was still there.
“Uncle Luke. Look.”
“That’s great.”
“You didn’t look.”
Sophie stood beside him with her birdhouse held in both hands. He turned toward her. The roof was purple, the walls yellow. She had painted a flower beside the entrance.
“I like the flower.”
She tipped it toward him so he could see the other side.
He bent down to look.
Nothing came to him.
Eventually, he stopped checking.
When it was time to sing, Ethan dragged over a chair and reached for the cake.
As he brought it down, his hands slipped.
Luke’s whole body tightened.
Ethan caught the board.
Then he grinned.
“You asshole.”
“I couldn’t resist.”
Luke stared at him for half a second, then laughed.
“That was extremely funny.”
“I thought so.”
Ethan set the cake on the table. Sophie blew out the candles to applause and claimed the largest yellow flower.
By the time the last guest left, the cake was missing a third of its frosting and most of one side. The rest sat harmlessly on the counter while Luke gathered cups and folded paint-stained newspaper.
Ethan found a spare birdhouse notebook beneath a favor bag and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“I know it’s usually Tuesdays,” he said, “but Therapy tonight?”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Therapy had begun during Ethan’s divorce, on Tuesdays when Sophie stayed with her mother. Luke brought takeout the first week. The next week he brought groceries because Ethan had eaten the remaining takeout for three days. By the sixth Tuesday neither of them bothered asking whether the other was free.
Later they moved to the diner. Ethan started sleeping properly again. The divorce became something that had happened instead of something happening every time his phone rang.
They kept Tuesdays.
Tonight, Ethan closed his menu without reading it.
“Did she have a good time?”
“Sophie?”
“No, Luke. You.”
“She had a great time.”
“I couldn’t tell. Every time I looked up, there was something else I was supposed to be doing.”
“She got the flower she wanted. She made a purple house. She corrected three adults.”
“That last one’s just Saturday.”
Their waitress took the order and brought their drinks. Behind her, a television above the counter showed a harbor full of small boats. An empty chair at the next table stuck out into the aisle; she turned sideways to pass it.
Ethan moved his glass away from the edge.
“What was with the cake?”
“Kids running around.”
Ethan waited.
Luke looked down at his coffee. He could leave it there. Ethan would make another joke, and they could eat.
“I kept seeing it fall.”
“Well, there were kids running around.”
“No. I saw it hit the floor.”
Ethan’s smile remained for a moment, waiting for the rest of the joke.
“Then I moved it to the counter, and I saw it fall there instead. Into the dishwasher.”
“The dishwasher was shut.”
“I know.”
Ethan sat back.
“You pictured it happening.”
“I didn’t try to.”
“You don’t have to try. I spent half the afternoon picturing somebody drinking paint.”
Luke nodded. He had been hoping for reasonable.
“There’s been other stuff.”
“What stuff?”
He told Ethan about Warren Road. The green light. Stopping for no reason he could explain. The truck.
Ethan asked how long he’d stopped before it came through. Luke couldn’t give him a number.
“An engine,” Ethan said. “A reflection. Something you noticed without knowing you noticed.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And now?”
Luke looked down at his coffee.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me.”
Luke mentioned a box slipping at work, his hands already reaching. Kevin finishing a sentence he felt he’d heard before.
“Kevin has six sentences.”
Luke laughed despite himself.
“I know.”
“There. We’ve explained one.”
Their food arrived. Ethan moved his cutlery, thanked the waitress, and waited until she’d gone.
“Does your mom know?”
“About something at the gym.”
“What did she say?”
“She wants me to see somebody. Because of the accident when I was little.”
“Have you called?”
“Not yet.”
Ethan looked at him for a moment.
“You should.”
Luke pulled his plate closer.
“Yeah.”
They ate for a while before Ethan spoke again.
“What do you mean, you saw it?”
“That’s the problem. Sometimes there’s something I can see. But it doesn’t feel like looking.”
“Imagining?”
“No.”
“Dreaming while you’re awake?”
“That sounds worse.”
“We’re running out of verbs.”
Luke set his fork down.
“It feels like remembering. Except then I’m standing there waiting for it to happen.”
Ethan considered that.
“That is a terrible sentence.”
“I know.”
Ethan put his fork down.
“Can you tell when—”
He stopped. Luke waited.
“Is it accurate?”
“Yes.”
Ethan nodded once. He left his fork on the plate.
“And afterward I start wondering whether that’s really what I remembered,” Luke said. “Whether I’ve changed it.”
He pushed a fry through a spot of ketchup.
“My mother said they used to write things down. After the accident. Things I’d done. What I remembered. Whether I still remembered it later.”
“Did that help?”
“I don’t remember.”
Ethan looked up.
“That wasn’t a joke.”
“I know.”
For a moment they were quiet.
“So write it down yourself,” Ethan said.
“What?”
“Before you lose the part you’re talking about.”
He reached into his jacket and set the little notebook beside Luke’s plate. The birdhouse on the cover had a red roof and a bird perched on top, ignoring the entrance.
“Your treatment materials.”
“This is Sophie’s party favor.”
“There were extras.”
Luke opened it. A small leaf was printed in the corner of each blank page.
“What am I supposed to write? I don’t know how I know.”
“Then don’t write how. Write what you get. Put the time. Then write what happens.”
“What if nothing happens?”
“Write that.”
Luke turned a page.
“Don’t make it make sense first,” Ethan said. “That’s the bit you keep saying disappears.”
Luke set the notebook beside his phone.
“And if it turns out you’re just tired, you’ve still got somewhere to keep your shopping list.”
“Thanks.”
“You’d put milk on it and leave it at home.”
“Probably.”
They finished eating. Ethan described the sleepover Sophie wanted next year: five children, a tent in the living room, and apparently no involvement from adults except the purchase and continuous delivery of food.
Luke told him the tent would fit if he moved the armchair.
Ethan stopped with his glass halfway to his mouth.
“You’re not putting that on the fridge.”
For the first time since he’d started explaining, Luke laughed without having to stop himself.
The waitress returned with the coffee pot. She refilled Luke’s cup and asked whether they wanted anything else.
Ethan said no, then changed his mind and asked for pie.
“You want some?” he asked Luke.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve had a difficult relationship with dessert today.”
“Order your pie.”
The waitress smiled and went to the counter.
On the television, the harbor disappeared. A photograph of an older man filled the screen. Luke recognized the face before he found the name: an actor his father used to watch in films on Sunday afternoons.
Water poured across Ethan’s wrist.
He screamed and jerked his arm back. Steam rose from his skin. A raw red patch spread above the heel of his hand, and a white dish spun beneath the booth.
Then Ethan’s wrist was dry.
He leaned toward Luke, bare forearm resting along the table edge.
“Ethan. Your arm.”
“What?”
Luke caught his wrist and pulled it inward.
Behind Ethan, the television announcer said the actor had died that morning.
The waitress turned her head.
She was passing their booth with a tray. Its outer edge struck the empty chair projecting into the aisle.
A cup tipped.
Steaming water splashed across the corner of their table. A saucer struck the edge and broke against the floor beneath the booth.
The waitress caught the tray against her body.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. Did that get you?”
“No,” Ethan said.
He lifted their phones away from the water and pushed the notebook toward the window. The waitress set down the tray. Ethan’s pie was still on it. She hurried to the counter for a cloth.
Luke let go of Ethan’s wrist.
The waitress picked up the broken saucer. A smear of white frosting remained on the floor beside her shoe.
“Luke.”
He looked up.
Ethan opened the notebook.
“Write it down.”
Luke looked at his friend’s unmarked wrist. He could still remember the scream.
Ethan hadn’t made a sound.