Eventually he reached for the keys.
They were attached to a brass tag shaped like a narrow boat.
Our address had been stamped on one side.
On the other were two words.
COME HOME.
He read them.
“Did you give me this?”
“No. Leah did, after you lost your keys twice in one month.”
“That sounds like me?”
“It sounds like the version of you who refused to put them in the same place.”
He turned the tag over.
The house key was bent.
The key to the van had snapped near the teeth.
Noah set them down and opened the work notebook.
His handwriting filled the pages in dark block letters: measurements, wiring diagrams, customer names, lists of parts. Near the center, he found a grocery list written sideways in the margin.
Coffee.
Dog food.
Limes.
Reid’s impossible cereal.
He pointed.
“What makes cereal impossible?”
“It has dried fruit.”
“That’s normal.”
“You called it bird feed.”
“Maybe you were right.”
I smiled.
Noah did not.
He touched the handwriting with one finger.
“I wrote this.”
“Yes.”
