Cancer took two years from us before it took her. There is a special exhaustion that comes from learning the geography of hospitals, from knowing which vending machine on which floor accepts a worn dollar bill and which nurse will find you a blanket without being asked. For a while we spoke the language of treatment schedules and test results more fluently than we spoke the language of ordinary days. When Sarah died, I discovered there were rooms in our old home I could no longer enter without feeling as though I had walked into an unfinished conversation.
I sold the house the following spring. I gave away most of the furniture, kept a few photographs and her blue enamel coffee mug, and found a smaller place in Willowbrook Estates. Its streets had mature trees and sidewalks wide enough for evening walks. The houses were modest rather than fashionable, and the garage behind mine was large enough for the two restoration projects that occupied me when sleep would not come.
The previous owner had worked a nearby agricultural operation and maintained a diesel storage installation for his equipment. It consisted of a professionally installed aboveground tank, a secured pump, an impermeable fueling pad, emergency shutoffs, spill protection, and a locked enclosure for the controls. The paperwork came with the property, along with a history of inspections and a permit that the relevant authorities confirmed could remain in effect under specified conditions after the transfer. Before I used it, I paid nearly fifteen thousand dollars for updated containment, labeling, and safety equipment, and I had the fire department and my insurer review the finished work.
I treated that equipment the way I had been trained to treat any fuel system: carefully, with records, restricted access, and respect for the fact that an ordinary substance can become dangerous when someone grows careless. It was not a commercial station. I sold no fuel and displayed no prices. The pump served my diesel pickup, approved equipment, and an emergency generator, and the tank was kept within the quantity and use limits of its permit.
Restoring old trucks became my way of filling evenings I didn't know how else to survive. There was a faded blue 1973 Chevrolet in the garage, a truck with stubborn bolts, missing trim, and a carburetor that gave me more trouble than it had any right to. I liked the predictability of its problems. Rust did not pretend to be something else, and when an engine refused to start, it generally had a reason that could be traced with enough patience.
The neighborhood seemed equally straightforward at first. Dorothy Martinez lived two streets over with her husband, Harold, who required oxygen support and whose laugh carried halfway down the block when their grandchildren visited. Bob and Elaine Orion cultivated vegetables behind a white fence and regarded the first tomato of summer with the seriousness other people reserved for graduation ceremonies. The Rodriguez family had two cars, three children, and a habit of leaving a bowl of candy on the porch for delivery drivers during the holidays. A young Black couple, Malik and Simone Carter, had installed a basketball hoop so their son could practice free throws after school.