Mikel had been dead for three days before Christy stopped expecting him to come home.
For those first three days, she continued listening for the familiar sounds of his arrival: the crunch of tyres against gravel, the opening and closing of a car door, footsteps approaching the house. Whenever a vehicle passed outside, she lifted her head. Whenever the telephone rang, her heart lurched before she remembered that grief had turned even ordinary sounds into instruments of torture.
On the fourth day, she found herself standing in the kitchen, staring at the second mug on the draining rack.
It was his.
He had a habit of leaving it wherever he happened to finish drinking, insisting that he would wash it later. Christy used to complain about it. She would pick it up, hold it in front of his face, and threaten to throw it away if he left it on another table.
He would grin, take it from her, and promise to do better.
He never did.
