The dawn light that filtered through the naked windows of the vacant house was the color of bruised bone. It showed him nothing, for there was nothing left to show. Reuben woke up on the floor of his daughter's bedroom, his body aching and stiff, the crumpled note still clutched in his hand. For a vertiginous moment, suspended between sleep and wakefulness, he waited to hear the comforting, familiar sounds of his former life—the gurgle of the coffee maker, the soft thud of Miriam's footsteps, the murmur of Emily's voice from the kitchen.
The silence that greeted him was less an absence of sound than a physical presence, a weight that pressed against his eardrums and filled his lungs. It was thicker than the silence in a mass grave, more profound than the quiet in a hospital room waiting
