Back here now

I absorbed as much of the air conditioning and the luxurious shower as I could at the hotel but in the end I had to let it go. Four more hours at the same place today. We don't know how to do it, the man said. That is, how to get along without your friend of 47 years who is suddenly and forever no longer in the next office.

I watched a doe in a roadside ditch on a mountain's slope look both ways before leading her tiny fawn across the road. The woman in the country store said bye-bye for now to one of her regulars. She looked at me with no expression at all. I am outside her circle of care. 

Soaking rain from a thunderstorm on the way home. A string of hot days to come.