He opened the screen door and took the letter from his pocket. "I've got a gun," Muriel said from inside the house, "and I'm aiming it exactly where your head is His heart started beating very fast. voice sounded level and accurate like her gun, he imagined. "It's Macon,' he said. "Macon?' The inner door opened a little. "Macon, what are you doing here?' He gave her the letter She took it and opened it, using both hands. (There was no sign of a gun.) she read it and looked up at him He saw he had done at all wrong. Last year," he said "I lost I experienced a loss, yes She went on looking into his face. "I lost my son,' Macon said. "He was at a hamburger bar and then someone came, a gunman, and shot him. I can't go to dinner with people i can't talk to their little boys! I don't mean to hurt your feelings but I'm just not up to this, do you hear?" She took one of his wrists very gently and she drew him into the house, still not live opening the door, so that he had the sense of slipping through something, of narrowly avoiding something. She closed the door behind him. She put her arms around him and hugged him "Every day I tell myself it's time to be getting over this," he said into the space above her head. "I know that people expect it of me. They used to order their sympathy but now they don't they don't even mention his name. They think it's time my life moved on. The first years like a bad dream - I was at his bedroom door in the morning before I remembered he wasn't there to be woken. But this second year is worse, it's real. I've stopped going to his door. I've sometimes let a whole day pass without thinking about him. And you is suppose Sarah and I could comfort each