He vomited into the chamber pot and pulled on his clothes. Downstairs, his mother set coffee before him and handed him Kate’s note. “It’s surprising she didn’t tell us aforehand,” she said, and turned back to the stove. She was cooking eggs; the greasy odor made his gorge rise again. The paper shook in his grip. Her sentence sloped down the page, not her usual fine penmanship. She hadn’t signed it. Last night’s dream came to him: butterflies feeding on his skin. He looked out the window. “They’re gone,” he said. “She went alone,” his mother said. “All the children are here. I told them that their grandmother is ill, that word came in the night.” She shook scrambled eggs onto a plate and put it before him. He inched it away, tried a sip of coffee. “She took the new buggy,” his mother said. “Buggy,” he said aloud, then repeated the word in his mind. “Bud Case came by. Benji and the Swede went with him.” “Christ,” he said. Today they were threshing at the Miller farm.
