It was about 9 a.m., which I thought was a reasonable time to go knocking. But their car was gone. There were fresh tire grooves in the snow, backing out of the drive. And there was blood in the snowbank along the road—maybe some animal. Maybe that dog Grace and I saw a few weeks back, the one she calls Alf. Maybe not. The mailbox that the postal woman knocked down with her vehicle was still lying there, toppled in the ditch. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to speculate. I walked up the yard until I could see the living room windows. They’re plastered over with newspapers now, and they definitely weren’t before. I went up on the porch and stood there and read the news stories, taped overtop of one another, some half-hidden. A few reported the usual small-town fare about failing local business, but the headlines were enough to give me some idea of the state of the world. For example: the British R&B sensation Shelbee Brown, who died of the SHV while I was in the Women’s Entry and Evaluation Centre, had a final album released posthumously.
