My father opened the door.
Walter Sutton stepped inside the way he always entered rooms, quietly and completely, with the kind of presence that makes people collect themselves without quite realizing they are doing it. He was holding a gift bag and wearing the same even expression he always wore, the expression of a man who has lived long enough that very little surprises him but very little escapes him either. He looked past my father and found my face immediately.
Then he looked through the kitchen windows toward the backyard.
He would have been expecting what he had been told to expect: cars along the curb, voices and light coming from the yard, the ordinary evidence of a celebration in progress. Instead he saw empty chairs in precise rows. Untouched food on the patio table. String lights glowing over nothing.
“Why is no one here?” he asked.
