The old life rearranges itself around you like a table setting. Small suitcase upon childhood bed. The inhalation of familiar smells—wood stove, pine cleaner, remnants of bacon grease. Mother tending to the house, the steely corners of her starched dress. Father a phantom, a bearded shadow floating in and out of the barn, a clanging noise in the basement, wrench against furnace pipe. You find it unsettling, how easy it is to slip into the routine as if you never left.

You spend the first few days floating in a familiar, lukewarm sea, drifting from one side of the farm to the other, examining the place like a historical landmark: here’s the hayloft where you broke your leg; there’s the milk pail you were regularly forced to drink from as a child, its contents steaming in the cold barn. You’re sleeping badly, uncomfortable atop the ancient bed, the springs digging into your spine, the house rasping like a diseased lung in the night.

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