John nodded. “You talk to her at dusk. I can’t hear the words. But I saw you set two cups of tea on the porch step, one for the air. I drew what I thought might be happening.”

Henderson looked at the destroyed fence, the open garage, the rain beginning to soak the corkboard. Then he did something he hadn’t done since Marie passed. He laughed. Not at John. At the absurd, tender bravery of it.

A late summer derecho ripped through the cul-de-sac, shearing the old maple between their houses. The fence collapsed. And with it, the back wall of John Persons’ garage—a wall Henderson had never seen, because John always kept the door down.

As a comic book creator, I work on a variety of projects, including: