Chapter 1
Chapter One: Nine O’Clock
Every night at nine, Dara left the porch light on, though no one had come up the path in years.
She did it the way other people wind a clock or lock a gate. She finished the dishes, dried her hands on the towel that hung from the oven door, and walked the length of the hallway to the switch beside the front door. The click was small and familiar. Outside, a yellow circle opened on the boards of the porch and spilled down the steps to the path.
The path was long for such a small house. It ran past the hedge and the maple and the mailbox with its stubborn, leaning post, and it ended at a gate she no longer bothered to latch. In the early years she had swept it every week. Now the weeds had come up between the stones, and she let them.
If anyone had asked her why the light stayed on, she would have said it was cheaper than the alternative. She was not sure what the alternative was. Nobody asked.
