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she had already brought the engine of her small silver Toyota to life.

Chapter Five
    Falling into autopilot, Hinchey rolled his polished Tacoma into the parking area in front of his house. He sat a moment, watching the house. Soft light spilled from the living room windows.
    “It’s eight o’clock, do you know where your mother is?” he asked himself gently, chuckling at his own sense of the absurd.
    Emma Barlowe had a passion for TV sitcoms and tonight was Thursday, her big night. Friends , Will and Grace . No, no one would see Mom Barlowe for a while. Later it would be Nick at Nite to get all the golden oldies.
    Once when he had been thinking particularly deeply about the issue, he decided his mother, whose life perimeters never made it past the pet store on Harlequin Street where she worked, got a taste of a much bigger, better life by watching these television fantasies. No matter that it was as unreal as a Warner Bros. cartoon. It seemed real during those half-hour episodes and that’s what mattered.
    “It’s me, Mama,” he called absently as he entered the kitchen door.
    His dinner waited on the range top. His mother, in her usual orderly manner, had separated hot and cold foods and covered each plate securely with aluminum foil. He opened the freezer, took out a frosted glass full of ice and filled it from the pitcher of fresh sweet tea resting on the counter. After transporting everything to his precisely set place at the table, he took a seat and unwrapped the hot plate. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes and stewed okra. The cold plate held sliced tomatoes and Waldorf salad, a favorite.
    “Ross just fell off a sofa and they think he has a broken arm,” his mother said as she entered the large kitchen.
    “Ross?” Hinchey queried around a bite of meat loaf. Then he remembered. Ross was a character on the Friends television show. “Oh, I hope not.”
    “Me too. How’s that meat loaf?” She poured herself a glass of tea.
    “It’s good, Mama. Good.” He chewed without looking at her. He knew she would disappear as soon as the commercials ended.
    “I used oatmeal instead of cracker crumbs this time.” She sipped tea as she watched him, awaiting a response.
    Hinchey swallowed and looked at his mother. She looked the same as always: faded housedress and slippers this time of day, short curly hair the color of tarnished silver, eyes a washed-out blue, mouth slack and surrounded by pronounced frown lines. Mama.
    “I like this better,” he said at last. “Has a better texture.”
    “Good. Listen, I’ve got a hankering for a cherry pie and I picked up a nice one today. Save some room for it.”
    “I will, Mama.”
    She shuffled from the room. Hinchey wolfed down the rest of his dinner, placed the dishes in the sink and took the back stairway two steps at a time.
    “Hello, Country Stud, this is your little Keychain. How’s life treating you there?”
    Hinchey grinned and pressed his index fingers tip to tip. He pushed them together hard, until it hurt, as if preparing himself for a grueling race. Leaning forward, he applied these fingertips to the keys as he typed a reply.
    Chain, good to see you. Life is good. Can’t complain. What’s happening in your neck of the woods?
    Hinchey loved the little notebook computer he’d bought on sale at the Circuit City store in Goshen. It was the one possession in life he valued. It was one of his precious few personal possessions as he still lived at home with his mother. He glanced around the room and saw little of himself there—the furniture was a light pine and tan set his mother had chosen. He would have preferred individual pieces of darker maple or cherry, with plaid upholstery maybe.
    He still slept in the single bed he’d slept in as a schoolboy more than fifteen years ago. Where had those years gone? He sat back and allowed his mind to wander, documenting his life to this point, his gaze lazily wandering the room. There had been two years of college at