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curtains, wouldn’t they?
    The street was mostly dark but for the lampposts in front of the houses, only half of which had working bulbs. The one in front of Sandra’s house had been lit last time, but now it was out. Almost like a sign.
    A car drove past and parked over near Sam’s cab. It wasn’t facing my way, and no more cars came behind it.
    The chances were slim Sandra and Peter had left a key under the doormat. Sure enough, when I looked, there wasn’t one. I checked the little ledge above the door, but there wasn’t one there, either.
    I’d almost convinced myself this was crazy and I needed to go when I noticed the flowerpot. It was sitting on the top step leading to the front door. In addition to dried twigs from last year’s flowers, there was a black rock about the size of a baseball sunk partially into the soil.
    “You gotta be kidding me,” I said, and plucked it out. Remarkably light for a rock that size, and it rattled when I shook it.
    I opened the rubber seal in the bottom and took out a brass key. Peter’s handiwork, I figured, endangering the family by hiding a house key in the third likeliest place a burglar would look. Lucky for him I didn’t want to steal anything.
    I slipped inside and shut the door.
    There hadn’t been an alarm last time I was there, and I didn’t see a console on the wall. Even after my shenanigans at that coffee shop and my note left in his busted-up briefcase, Peter still hadn’t thought to put in an alarm.
    Peering around the familiar townhouse, another line crossed in a long list of transgressions, I noticed everything seemed in order. The same family pictures were on the wall, so Sandra and Peter clearly hadn’t moved. There were a few changes since last time—a new dining table and a painting with horses running on a beach. If they were buying new tables and artwork they had to be happy, didn’t they?
    I thought about taking the picture with me when I left, or moving the furniture around like someone had been there. Maybe then they’d get an alarm—a good idea for a family with kids, living in a neighborhood with burned-out streetlamps. In that sense, my breaking-in wouldn’t be so bad, now would it?
    I left the painting alone and proceeded cautiously through the house like a ghost, hating myself for being there but unable to move on. Though I thought I’d come to terms with my feelings for Sandra, I was still the guy who couldn’t forget anything, and those old obsessive feelings from college were as sharp as the day I’d first felt them.
    “Poems are made by fools like me,” I said.
    I knew they had two kids, though I’d only met one of them: Danielle, who I thought of as my namesake, though I suppose it could have been a family name. Cute kid, looked exactly like her mother.
    When I got to Danielle’s room and peeked inside, I saw she had her own computer. I questioned the choice, what with online predators. Hopefully Sandra had installed all the proper software.
    Sandra and Peter’s bedroom looked the same as last time. The covers on the bed were neat on Peter’s side, messy on Sandra’s, and something about that made me smile—a human touch from my favorite human.
    There was a book on Peter’s nightstand.
    Still unsure of what I was looking for, I went over and picked it up. Some kind of self-improvement book, written by a man with great hair who knew the power of positive thinking. A look at the back showed that in addition to curing gambling, infidelity, and overeating, the power of positive thinking would guide the reader down the path of a drug-free life.
    More self-improvement books crowded the lower part of the nightstand, along with others I found particularly shocking: Peter was reading about angels. Not fiction, either, or not sold as such. This was testimonial stuff from people who’d had near death experiences, or people who’d gone through adversity and claimed an angel had flapped down and helped them.
    I laughed. Peter the