780 Days, 0 Hours, 31 Minutes, 54 Seconds.

She stopped to watch the news, then to watch a finger bleed. Downstairs, he's sitting at his new electronic keyboard, the earphones preventing noise from rising. All she hears is tapping, tapping, tapping. She doesn't think that's Happy Birthday he's practicing.

780 Days, 1 Hour, 4 Minutes, 12 Seconds

Or 1 Hour, 4 Minutes, 12 Seconds until her birthday. And it wasn't hunters – a workman said you could even see the truck tracks driving back there. Several broken lamps, not the one flashlight she thought. He looked closer than she did. Exactly one hour away from her mother's age when she moved to New York, she's too old for this. The clock they got for their wedding continues to chime the hours of daylight savings time. She hasn't strength to change it. The roof fixed out from over her, a much bigger job than she thought, that's what the worker was doing there. And he fixed the light in her study, a two second job with needle-nosed plyers. But she'd tried that herself.