The rabbit.
When the streetlights came on, Adrian stood on the porch sweating through his T-shirt.
Noah leaned against the doorframe.
“You need a hand?”
The voice came from across the street.
Adrian turned.
A woman was walking toward him carrying a casserole dish with both hands.
She was perhaps twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with dark hair tied loosely behind her head and the easy posture of someone who knew the neighborhood well enough to cross the street without looking nervous about traffic.
She stopped at the bottom of the steps.
“Adrian Cole?”
He nodded.
“I’m Ivy Lane.”
She pointed toward a blue house across the street with a deep porch and a wooden swing.
“I live there.”
Adrian looked.
He vaguely remembered the house but not her.
Ivy smiled.
“Your father talked about you.”
That tightened something in him.
“Hopefully not too much.”
“Enough.”
She looked past him toward Noah.
“And you must be Noah.”
Noah appeared more fully.
Ivy crouched rather than bending over him.
Adrian noticed.
“Hi.”
Noah looked at the casserole dish.
“Hi.”
“I brought dinner.”
“What kind?”
“Chicken.”
Noah narrowed his eyes.
“Sometimes I like chicken.”
Ivy nodded seriously.
“This is the sometimes kind.”
That earned a small smile.
She stood and handed the dish to Adrian.
“There's salad too, and bread underneath, so don't tilt it.”
“Thank you.”
“You have plates?”
Adrian opened his mouth.
Closed it.
“I think so.”
Ivy laughed.
“Come over if you don’t. My aunt collected casserole dishes like other people collect stamps.”
“Aunt?”
“The house was hers.”
Ivy glanced toward the blue place.
“She left it to me.”
Adrian understood that.
Different dead relative.
Different inherited house.
Same quiet rearrangement of a life.
Ivy stepped backward.
“Welcome home.”
She started across the yard, then stopped.
“One more thing.”
Adrian waited.
“Your porch light is dead.”
He looked above him.
“How do you know?”
“I've been watching the house.”
The sentence could have sounded strange.
It didn't.
She said it like a neighbor noticing weather.
“Change the bulb before tomorrow night or you’re going to break your neck.”
Then she walked home.
Adrian watched until she reached her porch.
Noah tugged his sleeve.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“The chicken smells good.”
They ate at the kitchen counter on paper plates Adrian found at the bottom of a box.
Noah had two servings.
That mattered more than Adrian admitted.
Since the divorce, he had tracked his son's appetite, sleep, moods, headaches, silence, sudden laughter, and every sentence containing the word Mom as if Noah were a complicated machine Adrian had been assigned to keep functioning.
“You should learn how to make this,” Noah said.
“I can cook.”
“You can make hot dogs.”
“Hot dogs are cooking.”
“Mom says hot dogs are not dinner.”
Adrian stopped chewing for half a second.
Noah noticed.
Of course he did.
“Mom’s right,” Adrian said. “Not every night.”
Noah poked a piece of lettuce.
“These have onions.”
“Those are chives.”
“What are chives?”
Adrian considered.
“Tiny onions.”
Noah stared accusingly.