3.

Sitting back on the couch, listening to that little chit-chit noise, drinking some leftover beer she bought for her dad to drink at Christmastime, she realized that it was probably a healthy thing she wasn't actually making lists about the potential success of an evening like this one.

This was the new normal for her, the way life would be for half the nights for forever. No kids in the house, no brain-scrambling moments of distress about whether they're awake or need something. No lunches to make or careless tasks to take her mind off the silence. And certainly no one interesting enough to disturb this pattern for the near future.

She idly picked at the bottle's label, making a little pile of paper beads on the maroon couch cushion. She got up from the couch and the wrapper-paper scattered everywhere. Normally, a kid making -- plotting out, really -- such a mess would be worthy of a quick comment. But she let the beads fall. She ducked out of the tv room, down the hall through the back bedroom and out to the patio. She was hiding cigarettes, pitifully, from nobody but herself, and she shook one out of the pack as she collapsed into a plastic chair and eyed the darkness. She heard a car door in the next garage, or maybe just blocking the alley, but didn't think much of it. It was an apartment in a city that nodded but never went completely to sleep. Footfalls approached and instead of passing and getting quiet as they receded, they stopped. Close to the gate to the garage, she thought.