Day 65

This one is technically on time

"Do we have to find it?" I ask Meredith. It's dirty in the basement and I've found black mold beneath old boxes. Hon is sitting on the bottom step watching us. None of us know where the gun is.
"Can't we just leave the house?"
"And do what Del? Leave a note? 'Sorry, my ex left a loaded .22 somewhere, hope you don't find it, sometimes the pilot light goes out.'"
"Well, maybe. If its this much gone, how they ever find it?"
"I don't want to do that." she says, "I don't want my problem to be someone else's."
There's a pause where I look behind and Hon has moved, his head buried sideways between two milk crates, cobwebs are pulled in around his neck like mosquito netting into a funnel.
"See, even your dog is helping. He gives a shit about me."
"Mery," I start but she's said it-and I want to leave, like I always leave, like I have before.
"Del?"
"We could go to Ann Arbor, or maybe Minocqua, like we did as kids. Just us, not worrying."
"Don't start with that shit again." And Hon pulls his head out and his face is covered in dust. He looks to me and his dark brown eyes as alive behind his mask of gray.
"You'd just leave me there. Where ever we went you'd leave us there."