The next day, feeling like crap both physically and emotionally for being so mean to Archie back at the cemetery, for chasing him away, I stared at a chair in the corner of the squad room. Hour after hour, the chair Archie had claimed as a five-year-old, the one he’d always sat in while he and I had eaten our late afternoon lunches, my first, Archie’s second for the day, it just sat there empty. It had for years most days. The problem now was I saw him there again. Not just at work, I saw him other places, too, at the stream, at home, at the store, just about everywhere I went, whether we’d actually ever been there together or not. It was just like the way I saw Dougie. The expression I’d put on their faces the last time I’d seen each wasn’t all that different, either. If Archie had once b
