The Front Pew

He sat down.

Not beside the candles. He went round the end of the front pew and sat in the one behind it, heavily, the way a man sits at the end of a double shift, and put both hands on the back of the pew in front of him. Then he looked at his hands. The three candle stubs stood on the end of the front pew, a foot from his knuckles, and the draught from the door we had not shut made them lean and straighten and lean.

I stayed where I was, with the note open in my fingers.

I’ve known for nine years. Nine, not ten. I heard it the way I hear a number in a contract that is not the number I expected. Not the morning. Not the week after, when the presents went back. The year after, then. Something had happened the year…