The family room smelled like wings and the cheese from the nachos and the particular heat a television gives off when it has been on since noon. Sunday. Lamps on because the October light had already gone thin. Blue from the set washed the carpet where Cole Brennan, twelve, sat in a replica jersey with a paper plate he had not finished. The crowd on the broadcast roared and then fell into the chatter of announcers who got paid to fill a commercial.
Lisa Brennan had her husband’s phone because it had buzzed on the arm of the couch while he was in the kitchen for more ice, and she had picked it up the way a wife picks up a phone that shows a preview she was not meant to read. She was forty-four, team sweatshirt, hair clipped back, bare feet. Rick was forty-six, the matching jersey, half-standing now, one hand out, the other still holding the remote as if the remote could settle a room.
The photo on the lock screen was a bedroom wall she had painted. The shirt in the photo was the shirt he had put on that morning, the gray one, not the jersey.
“Delete this thread before she gets home. That is your shirt from this morning in the photo, Rick.” She said it loud over the TV.