from Plainsong by Kent Haruf:
He stared at her. Then he closed his eyes and almost immediately drifted back to sleep. She returned to the front room. His wallet and keys were on the kitchen table inside his upturned cap, and she took money from his wallet and folded her meager belongings into a cardboard box together with her few toiletries, and tied a string around it, then left the apartment, wearing her new maternity pants but the same shirt she’d come in, with the same winter coat and red purse she’d had all along, and carrying the box by the string she went down the hall and stepped outside into the cold air. She walked fast to the bus stop and sat waiting there for more than an hour. Cars went by, people going to work or going early to church. A woman walking a white lapdog on a piece of ribbon. The air was chill and crisp, and westward above the city the foothills rose up stark and close, all red rocks now in the early morning sun, but the high dark snowy mountain ranges beyond were hidden from view. Finally the city bus came and she got on and sat looking at Sunday morning in Denver.
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