Emmett looked at the clock: 4:13. The cats were now on the couch next to them, purring and rubbing their heads against Emmett, begging to be petted. He sat up, obliged. Tallie didn’t wait for his water answer. She went into the kitchen, got a glass for him. He took it, still trying to surface from the deep sleep he’d been swimming in.
“I’m sorry,” he said again after he’d drunk the water, set the glass on the table.
“You don’t have to apologize. I want to help you. Do you need anything?” She sat beside him, offered him her hand. Palm up, she set it on his thigh.
（Tallie looks concerned. She has her thumbs through the thumbholes of her long-sleeved shirt. Her big brown eyes are now behind a pair of lavender crystal cat’s-eye glasses.） “It was about my wife.”
“I’m so sorry, Emmett.”
He’d been relieved when he slept well the previous night. No nightmares, no screaming. His brain had been far too exhausted. He was embarrassed he’d had a nightmare in Tallie’s house, somehow cursing their cozy bubble and ruining the hygge she’d been talking about. He was sure nightmares weren’t allowed to be a part of hygge, but he couldn’t stop them. No matter what he did or where he went, his blood and bones remembered. All he could offer up was a pitiful I’m sorry, whether it was whispered or hollered or whether he was in his own bed or on Tallie’s couch. Suicide wasn’t hygge, either, and if Tallie weren’t there next to him, that was the only thing that would’ve been on his mind, no question.
But she was there. And she kept her hand on his thigh, and Emmett put his hand in hers.
（The room smells faintly like pumpkins and sugar. The couch is soft, so soft, almost painfully soft, like moss. Tallie’s hand is warm, and she is breathing slowly, deliberately. The trees tattoo the roof with rainwater.）
*
Emmett got up early, before Tallie. He went to the bathroom, changed into his jeans and flannel shirt, brushed his teeth as quietly as he could. He filled a bottle from Tallie’s cabinet with tap water and found his way out to her garage. He stood with his back to the wall, eyes closed, listening only to his breathing before lifting the ladder. Finding and flicking the switch to open the garage door.
The clouds had reluctantly revealed a gray-white hint of sunlight, a break in the rain again. Emmett clapped the ladder against the house and began scooping out the wet leaves from Tallie’s gutters. He scooped and slapped them down onto her grass and bushes. Scoop and slap, scoop and slap. He got so in the zone that he was genuinely startled when he heard a woman’s voice below him, saying hello.
“I’m Tallie’s mom, Judith,” the woman said, smiled.
Emmett looked down at her, at the pumpkin and bucket of wine-dark chrysanthemums in her arms.
“Hi,” he said, before politely asking her how she was. She stood at the bottom of the ladder, told him she was fine.
“Tallie’s so smart to get you up there cleaning out those gutters. Feels like the rain will never end, although I guess technically it did, for a little bit. It’s supposed to start up again this afternoon, I heard. Y’know her husband used to clean the gutters out, but now they’re divorced. Her ex-husband,” Judith spilled, her brain-to-mouth gutters clearly cleaned out.
Emmett came down the ladder.
“She may still be sleeping, Miss Judith,” he said with his feet on the ground. “Can I get those for you?” He took the bucket of flowers, walked them up the steps to the porch, and put them there. Judith followed him with the pumpkin, which he also took from her and put on the steps with the other ones.
“Thank you so much. What’s your name?”
“My name’s Emmett,” he said, drying his hand on his jeans before holding it out for her. Judith took it and shook.
“Nice to meet you, Emmett.”
He told her the front door was unlocked before he went to the ladder, moved it, climbed up, continued the wet scoop-and-slap. In his periphery, Judith took a long look at him before disappearing inside.
*
When Emmett finished cleaning out the gutters and bagging the leaves, he washed his hands in the sink of Tallie’s laundry room. When he emerged in the hallway, Tallie was standing by the couch, folding her knitted blankets. Judith’s voice lifted up from the kitchen. Emmett wasn’t sure how Tallie wanted to play this. He was fine with Judith thinking he was a random handyman, stopping by on Halloween morning to clean out Tallie’s gutters. He could walk in there, let Tallie pretend to pay him, leave, go up the road, find a distraction until Judith left. Then he remembered that he’d left the couch half looking like a bed, left the pillow there on the edge, the blankets strewn and looping like soft cursive. And there was no work truck in the driveway he could claim was his, but Tallie could take care of it, tell her mom whatever she wanted.