“I get frightened when you go to work,” Coe tells Larry. “I stand at the front door holding the baby, and when you walk across the yard and reach for the truck door, I don’t feel you see us anymore. It’s almost as if we are gone.”

Paul Levine lives in Venice, Florida where the cleanup still goes on from hurricane ian. The Venice Literary Review, his book of about getting older and moving to Florida, is found on Amazon.