Chapter 15

The house was quiet, that first night. Far quieter than the inn had been and quieter than anything I remembered. Even my time at home before I'd started inhabiting retirement homes and elder care facilities hadn't been so quiet. The quiet was more a product of my feeling alone and far from anything or anyone I knew.

I sat around a while, then tried going for a walk, but the driveway emptied directly out onto the highway and I didn't want to be walking alongside it with the sun going down and the light fading, so I turned around and walked back to the house. I wandered the house a bit, poking my nose here and there. The basement seemed even emptier than the rest of the house, but I finally realized I had something I could do when I spotted the laundry room. The clothes in my cargo bag cold be categorized as either dirty or 'stale', so They all went into the machine – fortunately for me Cooper didn't seem to own a single pair of white socks or boxers, so I wasn't even worried about the old whites and colors problem. I got the laundry going and that got me wondering about fresh towels and bathroom supplies. I hadn't really looked through the bathroom to see what was there, and of course I hadn't thought to deal with my lack of toiletries while I was shopping for groceries.

I slept restlessly, but still woke up early, as I had every day that I'd been Cooper. I puttered around in the kitchen for a little bit, but I felt isolated here at the house by myself so I climbed into the Wrangler in search of breakfast.

I decided to go west on River Road today to see what I could find that way and wound up having breakfast at the River Inn Grill. The coffee was good and plentiful and that made me wonder what I had for making coffee at the house. I got a big to go container with a spill-proof cap and used the cup holder in the Wrangler for the first time as I headed back to the house to answer the coffee question.

I found no coffee and no coffee maker in the house. I found two tea pots and a wide assortments of teas. The James' had been tea drinkers, darn it.

It was Saturday May 28th and it was a long weekend holiday. The roads were filled with people headed for picnic and campgrounds all over the state. I was at loose ends. "No sense sitting here if I want coffee tomorrow," I said to empty air.

I went back to the place where I got my groceries, because they had a JC Penney and I knew I could get a coffee maker there. I found what looked like a nice one, then I wandered a while, thinking I needed a couple of button-up shirts, more slacks and a couple more pairs of shoes, I headed back to JC Penney, knowing they carried big and tall sizes. If I'd have been able to make it back from the jungles of the Philippines in time for the funeral I might have worried about a suit, but according the documents I'd read, both those I'd found in Cooper's cargo bag and those Darius had given me, I'd missed that by more than a week. Still, I would go visit them soon, and I wanted to be wearing something besides a T shirt and jeans when I did.

Once I'd done my shopping I found a nice restaurant for lunch, and while I was eating I noticed a curious thing. About half the people eating in my section had those computers you could carry around with you that ran on batteries. Some were small tablets and the others were the folding kind. Laptops, I think they were called. I'd had a grandson show me one, but I'd not been feeling well that day and I wasn't able to concentrate on what he was doing. Still, I was remembering now that these computers these days allowed you to connect to the internet and email from almost anywhere. This was probably what I needed, given my ignorance about so much of the modern electronics that everyone seemed so tied to these days. When I finished my meal I approached one of the younger men, high school age, I thought.