The yellow cab bounced hard as it hit the deep pothole by my driveway, but it was the blank space under the front eave that made me sit up. The porch swing was gone, and only the rusted chains remained. They hung straight down from the ceiling hooks, perfectly still in the October air, like two iron plumb lines marking the emptiness of the porch.
The driver pulled the handbrake with a loud click that sounded like a rifle bolt sliding into place. He did not get out to help me with the olive-drab duffel bag sitting on the floorboard next to my good leg.
“That will be twelve dollars,” he said, looking at me through the rearview mirror. He had a gray stubble on his chin and a faded ball cap with a local union logo.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, my fingers clumsy from the chill that always seemed to settle into my joints around five o’clock. I found a crumpled ten and two singles, flattening them against my thigh before passing them through the gap in the plastic partition.
“You want me to wait?” he asked, his voice flat. He looked past my shoulder at the dark windows of the house.
“No,” I said. “My wife is inside. She is probably putting the girls down.”
The driver stared at my duffel bag for another moment, then reached for his clipboard on the dashboard. He did not say anything else, but his silence felt heavy, full of the kind of unspoken judgment people in town had been offering since my name showed up on the regional casualty list. I did not want his pity, and I did not want his curiosity.
The driver looked down at my left trousers leg, where the fabric did not bunch quite right over the ankle. He had seen the leg when I climbed in at the depot, the way I had to hoist it with both hands to get it clear of the door frame.
“You sure about that?” he asked. “There is no car in the drive. Usually, Mara has that little red coupe parked right up against the garage door.”
The mention of her name from a stranger made my chest tighten. I did not know this man, but in a town like Oak Creek, everyone knew whose husband had been sent to the clinic in Dayton and whose wife was still driving the red car.
“She might be at her mother’s,” I said, though my mother lived only three miles away and would have told me if they were staying there. “Or the grocery store.”
He grunted, took the bills, and did not offer a welcome home. I turned the handle and pushed the door open, swinging my left leg out first so I could get my heel flat on the gravel.
The prosthetic was a new model from the clinic in Dayton, made of black carbon fiber and heavy straps that smelled of synthetic rubber. The doctors had told me it would feel natural by the time the snow fell, but right now it felt like a cedar post strapped to my hip with thick leather belts.
I pulled my duffel bag out after me and shut the cab door. The driver did not waste any time, shifting into reverse and backing down the driveway with a spray of loose stones before turning onto Elm Street.
The red taillights of the cab disappeared behind the high privet hedge at the corner, leaving me alone in the twilight.
The gravel path to the steps looked longer than it had when I left. The weeds had grown up through the stones, dried brown by the first frost and bent over like little ribs across the dirt.
I stood there for a second, letting my eyes adjust to the gray light of the Ohio evening. The house was a simple two-story frame, painted a faded slate gray that always looked blue when the rain hit it.
I adjusted the strap of my duffel bag, shifting the weight to my right shoulder to keep my balance. Every step required a conscious decision, a small command from my brain to my hip to swing the knee forward, waiting for the microchip in the joint to register the angle before I dared to put my weight down.
My left hip ached where the socket met the bone, a deep, throbbing pressure that always worsened when the temperature dropped. The doctors had given me exercises to do, small stretches designed to keep the muscles from tightening around the metal pin, but out here on the gravel, those exercises felt like a distant memory.
The gravel shifted under my boot with a dry, crunching scrape. It was the only sound in the yard, loud enough to feel like an intrusion.
I stopped at the bottom of the wooden steps and looked up at the porch. The gray paint was peeling in long, curling strips near the foundation, revealing the wood underneath.
There were no toys on the steps. Usually, Emma left her yellow plastic bucket near the bottom, and Lily’s rubber blocks were scattered across the doormat.
lifted my right foot to the first step, gripped the wobbly handrail, and dragged my left boot up beside it. The wood gave a dull groan under my weight, the sound flat and dry in the evening air.
The third step had always had a loose board that Mara asked me to nail down before I left. I avoided it by instinct, stepping wide to the right, my prosthetic knee clicking twice as the joint locked into place.
By the time I reached the front door, the sweat was running down the back of my neck under my collar. I reached into my pocket for my keys, my fingers brushing against the cold metal of the brass ring.
The house looked different from here. The front window was dark, and when I pressed my face to the glass, I could not see any furniture in the hallway, only the pale gray light reflecting off the bare floorboards.
I slipped the key into the deadbolt and turned it. The latch slid back with a light click, far too easily for a door that should have been locked tight against the autumn wind.
