“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Then Roger returned the phone to its charger and listened to the refrigerator hum.
He had retired from the postal service eleven years earlier.
For thirty-seven years, he had worked inside a system organized by time.
Truck arrivals.
Sorting windows.
Routes.
Collection deadlines.
Everything happened according to clocks.
Retirement had seemed wonderful for approximately six months.
After Elaine died, time stopped behaving.
Monday felt like Thursday.
Breakfast could happen at ten.
Lunch sometimes did not happen.
He could go three days without speaking to another human face-to-face.
Nobody needed him anywhere.
Then Hector appeared.
Roger remembered that first afternoon clearly.
It had been early October.
Warm enough for short sleeves.
Roger had carried a folding chair outside because the apartment felt stuffy.
He sat beside the entrance watching traffic without any real purpose.
Then something moved near the hedge.
Cream fur.
Dark tail.
The cat emerged slowly.
Large for a Siamese.
Lean but healthy-looking.
He walked toward Roger with no sign of fear.
Stopped three feet away.
Sat.
Stared.
Roger stared back.
“Well.”
The cat did not move.
“You’re certainly confident.”
One slow blink.
Roger laughed.
It was the first time he remembered laughing aloud in weeks.
“You hungry?”
Hector looked toward the building entrance.
Roger went upstairs.
He found a leftover piece of cooked salmon from dinner.
He cut some into a small dish.
When he returned, the cat had not moved.
Roger placed the food down.
The cat stood.
Approached.
Sniffed twice.
Then ate.
“You need a name.”
The cat continued eating.
Roger studied him.
“Hector.”
The cat paused.
“Hector sounds right.”
He resumed eating.
“That settles it.”
The next afternoon, Roger went outside at 4:20.
Hector was there.
The day after that, 4:18.
There.
Within a week, Roger had accidentally created a schedule.
Then he started respecting it.
By the second month, 4:15 had become sacred.
Roger sometimes talked while Hector ate.
At first, nonsense.
“Cold today.”
“The elevator stopped on four again.”
“Mrs. Dobbs left her laundry in the washer for three hours.”
Hector listened.
Or appeared to.
Then Roger began telling him real things.
He told Hector about Elaine.
How she used to sing while washing dishes.
How she always forgot where she put her glasses even when they were on top of her head.
How she believed every houseplant deserved a name.
He told Hector about Susan.
About how proud he was of her.
About how he worried she felt guilty for living far away.
He talked about the postal service.
About books.
About the Cincinnati Reds.
About his knees.
About how strange it was to become old enough that doctors became younger than your daughter.
Hector never interrupted.
Never offered advice.
Never said Roger should move on.
Never told him grief required hobbies.
He ate.
Sat.
Sometimes curled beside Roger’s shoe.
Then left.
Roger never knew where.
He tried following him once.
Hector disappeared through a gap between two garages and looked back with an expression that seemed to say boundaries were important.
Roger respected that.
He assumed Hector belonged to nobody.
A neighborhood stray.
An outdoor cat.
Maybe a dozen people fed him.
Roger did not care.
Hector came at 4:15.
That was enough.
Now the step was empty.
Roger waited.
4:25.
4:31.
4:36.
The tuna began drying around the edges.
Roger picked up the dish.
Then changed his mind and left it.
He walked around the building.
“Hector?”
He checked beneath parked cars.
Behind the hedge.