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lasts only a minute or two before it stops and fades. It’s something I could never even imagine, like seeing a true-to-life ghost with my own eyes. It’s so creepy, yet I watch again and again before finally putting it back on the shelf. I sit there at the edge of my bed for a while. I got this cold feeling inside me. And the light in my room dims for a minute. I decide to take a nap, so I crawl under the covers for a while.
    Dad doesn’t get off work from the family hardware store until late that day. He’s been running it since I can remember. I’ve spent plenty a weekend there goofing off and working the register. Since he’s coming home late it gives me time to make some beef and vegetable stew. Whoever comes home first makes dinner, and that’s usually me, unless we go out or get takeout. Mom was a hell of a better cook than me. That was a weird thing to adjust to when she died: not having someone who could cook. It was like, there’s no food and now what? Mom must have seen this dilemma coming because whenit came time for me to cook, I opened the coupon drawer, where she kept a list of recipes on a notepad, and it was all rewritten nicely in a brand-new notebook. Casseroles, stews, meat loaf, I had to learn all of it. I just followed the directions and it usually came out okay. Luckily, the stew comes out good today, and later on when Dad comes home he has two servings. I wait until he looks nice and relaxed before I tell him about skipping out on suspension. I make sure to include how Mrs. Smith was being a crow.
    “She sounds pretty bad all right.” He chews on a dinner roll. “Next time just keep your mouth shut and do your time. Save yourself and me some trouble, okay?”
    “Yes, sir,” I say.
    “I want to see some A’s on that report card.”
    “The only class there’s even a chance of me getting a B in is algebra, and I don’t think that’s likely.”
    “Don’t get so cocky, son. It’ll bite you back in the end.” After dinner Dad watches television in the living room. I’m lying in bed in my boxer shorts with the phone to my ear talking to David when Dad comes into my room.
    “Have you seen Trixi?” he asks me. Trixi’s a black-and-gray tabby cat we found when she was just a stray kitten meowing by the back door, hungry and dirty. At the time Dad wanted to take her to the animal shelter, but Mom wouldn’t let him do it. And we raised it ever since. At least my mom, Jim, and I did. Dad always hated that cat. Couldn’t stand the sight of it. He always wanted a dog. But ever since Mom died he acts like it’s his favorite thing in the world. He talks to it, follows it around, gives it tuna. You’d think it was his daughter or something.
    “No,” I say.
    “It’s been a couple of days. Something might have happened.”
    “Cats do that all the time, Dad,” I say. “They disappear for a while then show up again.”
    “I’m gonna go out and look for her. Do we have any chicken? She loves that chicken. Maybe I’ll go out and get some chicken.”
    I hang up the phone and walk out into the kitchen, thinking that if Mom were here, she’d just say, “Leave it alone, George. Trixi will be okay.” And that would be that. My dad takes a couple of the change jars, one filled with pennies and the other filled with nickels, and pours them out onto a table. “Maybe I’ll get a live rooster and we can skin it,” he jokes before leaving for the store. He comes back fifteen minutes later with some sliced chicken sandwich meat. “Come on,” he says as he goes out the back door. I put on some flip-flops and follow him out back, still wearing only my boxers. He walks out to the woods behind our neighbor’s house. Mrs. Heard is an old lady who lives alone. Back in her part of the woods behind her yard is a little path that I used to play around years ago when I was little. Walking out there that evening, I’m surprised how far it stretches. It goes so far as to reach some more streets and