The Woman In The Window

Richard Lake: HOUSTON — Tuesday evening, it is warm. The old man mows the lawn in the twilight. Darkness has not yet arrived, but it is coming.

The old man is out of gas now, almost through. He heads toward the garage for more, which is when he sees her. He gazes.

She had been talking to him all afternoon as he mowed, which he calls sweet and which comforted him. But now, in this moment, in the waning daylight, Mary Bounds looks upon her husband from inside their home. The bedroom window frames her face like a portrait.

Charles Bounds smiles at his wife, dead now 7,447 days.