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had given me ten days. I felt the unwilling tug of a kid forced onto a team for dodge-ball, standing on a gymnasium floor, the red rubber ball in my hands, a fast dodger, but a bad thrower. I’d always been a coward. Running from someone throwing me what I deserved. Eventually, I’d turn my back and it would hit, whatever was coming. 
    I needed to call the prison. I wanted to be punished, but it wouldn’t fix what I’d done. They’d judged me not guilty, and in that moment I knew the gap between law and truth. 
    I felt guilty. 
    There were days I wanted to volunteer for execution myself. That picture of Row. In the picture, I saw my wife’s face. He had her eyes. He had my mouth. Who knew what else he’d have had, had he lived? My bad judgment? Her anger? 
    I felt the jig of rocks under my wheels, and turned the car back into the road. Not sober. I drove to the diner. 
    Night, and lights glowing out over the dark high desert. It was full, and I wasn’t expecting that, the windows showing me the population of Ione. There was Ralph from the hardware store, and the girl from the library, sitting at the counter on red vinyl stools that had seen better days. I stumbled out of my car and into the dark lot. 
    I had a sudden vision of the face of Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, looking up at me from under thick black eyebrows, but I didn’t have any idea what Dusha looked like. I could only see his smile. It was a smile of certainty, that I would do what he wanted, that I was weak. 
    What was I doing? Trying to report someone already imprisoned? The letters were Approved , ruled safe. 
     
    There are, as you know, consequences for a man who abdicates his responsibility.
     
    I hadn’t slept in too many months, was all. Paint fumes and heatstroke too. I looked into the diner. It looked safe in there. Black coffee. A pot to myself, at the counter. Maybe I hadn’t really been eating, either, but just imagining the meals served by ghosts. Maybe I was starving. I’d walk into the diner and start over. It was the American way. I could be allowed to erase my history. People did it all the time. Through the windows, I watched a woman pushing her plate away, a waitress silent movie-ing her hands in the air. I stood in the dark, longing for everything inside. I wanted them to see me, to make sure that I could be seen. 
    I realized suddenly that I didn’t know what had happened to the people next door, my neighbors, the burnt-out rectangle. I didn’t know if they’d lived or died or run off into the dark. I didn’t know if they were in prison with Dusha.
    I made it almost to the door, but there was a sound I couldn’t place. I realized it was the hissing of the lights. I looked up at the diner sign. 
    LISCHEN’S DINER it said, blinking on and off. Then it didn’t say that anymore, but something else entirely. 
    The letters blinked out completely one by one, until they read only HER. As they did, the girl from the library walked beneath them, unbraiding her hair. She turned her head, looked out the window, and saw me. She smiled. She waved her hand. She called me in. 
    HER.
    The lights were red and blazing and I stared at them as she beckoned. The remaining letters of Lischen’s Diner blinked back on, as though they hadn’t been off. I walked to the diner door, and opened it, slowly. I hadn’t been this drunk in a long time, and I hadn’t even realized it was happening. 
    The guy from the hardware store turned around. 
    “Hey, there, fella,” he said, and the way he said it was so friendly, I almost cried out in pain. “Have you tried the keys yet? They’ve been there years. Might be for locks you got, might not. The people who lived there were strange ones. You’re not from that family, are you, boy?”
    My knees buckled. 
    “I need to use the phone,” I said. “I don’t have one where I live.”
    The girl from the library was already on her feet. 
    “Are you okay? You don’t look okay,” she said. “How