2:13

In the darkness just before sunup, Patrick heard someone breathe his name. For a moment she was there again. Stillness gathered, thick and close.

Years had passed since that night, yet the house remembered. Cold and waiting, it seemed to lean inward as if listening too.

Pine walls rose close around him, boards marked by years of smoke and winter. The ceiling cracked when the cold settled. Through the small window, cottonwoods lined the ridge, their branches drawn white against the sky. Everything Lynn had chosen still stood. Everything that stayed when she didn’t.

Her name remains unspoken. The silence has weight. The old house breathes. Wood pops once in the stove as last night’s coals surrender their heat. Somewhere outside, a horse stamps once in the corral, then silence folds again over the land.

In the kitchen, the grinder hums. Beans split, sharp and rhythmic. The kettle lifts a rising whine, steady as a thought he can’t stop hearing. The smell comes bitter and clear. Two mugs find the counter without intent. One returns to its shelf, the cabinet door swinging too long before it rests. The other fills. Steam drifts sideways and thins in the cold.

Static laces through the radio. Patrick turns the knob. A woman’s voice counts the temperature, vowels long and patient. There will be flurries. There will be wind by noon. Beneath her words, a hymn drifts from a far station, thin voices carrying through distance. The sound makes the room feel larger, as if some hidden door had cracked open in the dark.

Kindling takes flame, light crawling up the metal belly of the stove. Outside, the ridge glows under a sky the color of pewter. Grain spills from his hands into the trough. The horses lift their heads and chew, breath smoking into still air. For a heartbeat, he swears another set of footsteps follows his own. Then nothing. Just the cold moving through.

The fence line pulls him forward. Wire hums under his gloves. A loose strand at the corner waits for repair, a small thing, the kind that still gets done. The larger ones don’t.

By ten, the kitchen floor is swept clean. By eleven, water runs in the sink, a single pot soaking. Noon brings bread and cheese eaten in quiet, back to the stove. Two pages pass without meaning. At one, the book shuts and his eyes close.

Paint is scuffed beside the pantry door, shoulder-high, the mark of a box once carried. He’d meant to sand it smooth.

Sleep comes not as rest but a slow surrender. The chair warms beneath him. His head tips forward. A soft knock stirs him. Eyes open to stillness. No one stands there. Only his knuckles ache, as if the sound had come from inside the bone.

DAY ONE

The clock above the door catches his eye. A plain face, black hands. Not his choice—hers. She picked it. It keeps better time than he does, though lately he’s not sure what day it keeps. Yesterday it read noon when the light was wrong for noon. He wrote Tuesday on the fridge to be sure.

The minute hand slides toward the three. It comes first as a feeling, then a sound. The house tightens. The air thins. Curtains lift though the windows are shut.

The breeze moves through the living room at two thirteen. A thin draft along the baseboards, rising like a hand. It has come three days in a row. Standing, he watches the doorway. The breath of it brushes his face. Cedar. Coffee. Something else he cannot name. A sweetness that sits in the throat, and swallowing feels like agreeing.

Hands flat on the table, he leans forward. The wood, worn smooth by years of use, holds a faint warmth. He breathes it in, trying to keep the air that still carries her scent. Foolish, he thinks. Sick. Both true.

Windows checked. Doors latched. Jambs tight. The frame is square, the locks hold. Crawlspace hatch, attic pull—each found, each fine. His movements are deliberate, soft, like someone who doesn’t want to wake the house.

On the mantel, the dust shows four finger marks, evenly spaced, the last one smeared at the edge.

Lynn's scarf rests over the back of the chair, tied in a small knot. He’d placed that scarf in the trunk months ago. The trunk is still closed. It stays that way. Fingers curl in the wool. The fabric is cold. When he sets it down, the knot looks different. Back on the chair it goes. Distance feels safer than proof.

Evening falls early. Wood stacked beside the stove, the warmth waits its turn. An egg and slice of ham meet the pan. Standing, he eats. Tea curls steam into the air. The radio hums with static. Outside, the wind climbs and drags across the roof. Curtains drawn, he sits beside the ticking clock.

The notebook waits on the table. Smooth paper, cream-colored, clean. Patrick hadn’t kept a journal before. He does now. The day in order, line by line. Times, notes, things seen and felt.

He writes: 2:13. Breeze through the living room. Cedar. Coffee. Leak? Curtains moved inward.

Then, slower: Heard a woman speak on the radio. Could not hear the words. Thought it might be my name.

The bed they shared still holds his shape. On his side, he faces the door. No one knows about the wind. No one to tell. The neighbors live a mile off. The road is cruel in winter. Old friends drifted. The calls stopped. After the funeral, he’d kept the door closed. Couldn’t stand their food, their voices, or the way they looked at her picture.

DAY TWO

Before full light, he wakes in the dark. Smoke where there should be none. The stove shut, the flue clear, the hearth cold.

When the door opens, the air outside stands still. Only his shirt carries the scent. The smoke clings like a touch, and he cannot tell where it begins. A window cracks open. He lies back down.

Toward dawn, sleep folds over him again. In the dream, he stands at the sink with his back to the room. Lynn passes behind him and rests a hand on his shoulder. A breeze lifts her hair. She turns to speak, but a sound like breaking glass cuts through from the other room. She looks toward it and fades. When he wakes, the sink is dry, his shoulder cold. The cup lies unbroken on the counter. He isn’t sure he has woken at all.

Morning comes gray. A cracked cup waits in the trash. No memory of breaking it. Maybe it happened yesterday. Maybe not. The pieces lie on the counter. He tries to glue them, but his hands tremble and the seam will not hold. A crescent of glaze is missing, a small bite of porcelain gone. The shards go to the barrel with the rest of the trash.

Under the steps, the soil turns loose. The ground gives like old bread. A strand of blue thread hangs from a nail beneath the rail. He winds it around his finger and pockets it. Trash, he tells himself. Still, a faint blue line remains on his skin and does not fade.

The day goes on. The horses eat. Work steadies him. Wire tightens until it sings. Above the ridge, a single cloud holds its place and will not move. He tells himself it is nothing.

By two, he is back inside. In the hall, he watches the clock. Shame rises, thin as smoke. He says the word aloud. Shame. It does not help. Both hands rest on the doorframe. He waits. His own breath fills the silence. A picture rattles once, out of time with the ticking. The face inside tilts though the frame stays straight.

Two thirteen comes again. The breeze slips along the floor and climbs the wall. It lifts the hair on his arms. The scent returns—cedar, clean wool, a thread of smoke. It could be the stove. It could be a memory. It carries the faint trace of her shampoo. He holds his breath and fails. Tears come. He has not cried since the pastor stood in the snow and spoke the words that end a life.

Words break from him. I’m sorry. Again. He does not say for what. The silence between them had teeth. He taught it to bite.

The notebook waits on the table. Patrick writes one line: If I did it, I will tell the truth.

He writes it twice more. Closes the book. A mug sits on top of it. Tea steams between his hands. He does not drink.

Outside, the wind changes. It comes in short pulses that do not match the trees. It thumps once against the back wall, scrapes a gutter, then taps three times at the kitchen window. Pause. Three more. The radio hums low. He sits by the door. Steps sound faint on the porch boards. He waits. He does not open the door.

Sleep takes him near morning. The house in his dream is bright, every window open. She stands in the bedroom, wearing his shirt, hair damp from the shower. The age she was when they first came here. She mouths something, but the voice comes from the hall instead. The light shifts. The room tilts. The whole house breathes in and out like lungs.

He wakes with the taste of metal in his mouth.

DAY THREE

A smear marks the kitchen wall at hip height. It could be from a box he carried. It could be from a hand in the night. The rag and water only spread the color. At the sink, he scrubs his fingers until they redden. The smell in the room changes—a clinic on a bad day, that raw-metal sweetness. It gathers at his waist, rolls through him, and he bends over the basin, almost sick but not enough to finish it.

Outside, the cold steadies him. Face to the wind, hands open, he asks the air to be kind. He asks for one clear thing—a memory he can hold that does not ruin him.

The boundary path takes him. He circles the property like a man rowing in place. The horizon holds. A hawk drifts above the far field and tilts one wing. He watches a long while, wishing he could live that way, moving through air without the need to ask why.

By noon, he returns. Washes. Shaves. Sweeps. Each task spoken aloud as if to keep himself visible:

He will be calm.

Will not wait by the door.

Will not count the seconds.

Will sit in the bedroom with the window cracked and listen to the real wind in the cottonwoods.

Will prove the house is sound.

Will not say her name.

He tries. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he watches a line of light crawl across the rug. The air stays still. His eyes sting. A hard blink clears nothing.

At two thirteen, the wind enters though no window stands open. It lifts the curtain in the living room, crosses the hall, brushes his cheek. He follows it to the kitchen. The scarf lies on the chair again. The cup he’d glued is whole on the counter, the missing crescent restored, a faint seam like healed bone. His fingers test the edge. It holds. Breath stops in his chest. When he turns back, the cup is gone. Only the glued shards sit in the trash, damp as if freshly washed. He cannot tell which version came first.

Her name breaks from him then. Lynn. The first sound in weeks. The house seems to listen. The word fills the room and comes back changed. He feels the change inside his ribs, in the soft parts that stay soft even when a man teaches them not to be.

Palms flat to the table, he forces memory forward. The back of her head. The hum of the fridge. A fight that wasn’t large, born from the thousand small things that never matter until they do. The wind had been strong. A door hadn’t latched. The night smelled of cold iron.

Glass breaking. Rising. A shape in the doorway. His own voice saying wait. Then weight against him, and a wall that did not give.

Later, a dent in the drywall the size of a shoulder—never patched.

Certainty will not come. The mind is a poor witness. He says it to the empty room. The room stays silent.

Light drains from the house. On the porch, the scarf lifts and falls. He takes it in both hands and presses it to his face. The scent is clear enough to stagger him: cedar, clean wool, a breath of smoke like the first minutes of a fire. He says he is sorry again, saying Lynn’s name this time, quieter than breath. The wind answers from the cottonwoods, a voice through a closed door shaping his apology back at him.

He sits on the step until the stars rise. His breath turns white. The horses move somewhere in the dark. From the path by the shed comes a sound of soft feet. He tells himself to stand and look. He does not. Some truths are safer unseen.

Sleep finds him at the table, his head folded in his arms.

DAY FOUR

Before dawn, he wakes to a room that is not the one he left. The mug waits full of fresh coffee. The stove gives off a low warmth. The cup sits to the right of the notebook—her side. The notebook lies open to a page Patrick does not remember writing. The hand is not his. The letters are narrow and careful.

The line reads: Tell the truth.

Below it, another hand has begun a neat T.

Notebook in hand, he walks to the door. The wind rises early, not at two thirteen but now, while the sky still holds the color of steel. It slips past him and through the house, drawing him forward with a sound like a whisper underwater. The hair on his wrists lifts, listening.

Outside, the cold cuts clean. The house hums behind him like something alive. He speaks to the air and the wind falls still. He names what he remembers. He names what he fears. If he hurt her, he will carry it. If he didn’t, he will carry it anyway. Either way is a door he opens. He waits for the answer that never comes.

When he turns back, the door stands wide. Light from the kitchen stretches across the porch boards in a bright strip. The scarf lies fallen on the floor. A spoon clicks twice. A chair moves once.

He holds the notebook to his chest. He does not go in. He does not run. The wind moves past him again, bringing cedar and the faint sweetness he still cannot name.

Inside, the clock marks the minutes. He counts without meaning to—ten, eleven, twelve—and keeps going. The light on the floor shifts. His hands go numb.

The radio wakes on its own. A woman’s voice gives the hour in a calm tone. A hymn drifts up from distance, one she used to hum while washing the cups. Eyes closed, he steadies his breath.

The wind passes once more, carrying a voice that speaks his name the way she did when she was tired. He tells himself it’s the house. He tells himself again.

He opens his eyes and steps to the threshold. The room holds its shape. The coffee steams. The notebook waits on the table with the page that says what it says. In the window’s glass, a man who looks like him lifts a hand to the frame, testing the shape of things that do not move when he does—and do when he doesn’t.

He stays still. Behind the reflection, another hand presses from the other side.

The breeze gathers his hair the way she used to.

DAY—

The date on the calendar is clear for once. February 13.

The day Lynn died. The day he keeps waking to.

Morning breaks hard along the ridge. Frost burns white across the field. The cottonwoods whisper as if counting the hours he’s stolen.

He waits for a sign that is easy. The world offers only wind.

Inside, the coffee still steams, untouched. The notebook lies open to the same line. Tell the truth. The ink is wet again.

A voice, close to his ear, whispers his name. The sound moves through him like breath through ash.

He turns toward it.

The door closes on its own.