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left on their lease back home, but so what, they’d break it. Two weeks’ notice wouldn’t be anywhere near the end of the school year, but the books were unanimous and frank: Do what you must to take care of yourselves. Seth wanted this job. He wanted Shipley to gripe about being left in the lurch. He wanted to grasp the man’s shoulder, to clasp his hand, to look him straight on, and say, “I am so very sorry for your loss.”

BENJI IN ELDERLAND
    T HE LAYOUT OF THE CART paths made it a huge pain in the rear to shop offsite, so most folks didn’t bother. Ben Thales did though. Eggs were fifty cents a dozen cheaper at the Walmart across the way. Chicken breasts, too, almost a dollar less a pound. And it’d been a close eye on his money that had gotten him here in the first place. Golf twice a week, tennis twice a week, a guest suite for Stephen and Anjali with jets in the bathtub and a loft for the kids they’d presumably get around to having someday; not bad for a dumb kid out of Wheelsburg. Truth be told though, it wasn’t about the nickels and dimes. It was the way the whole system reeked of coal scrip. It wasn’t easy shaking a thought like that, not when your family’s two generations out of the mines. He’d been the first Thales to leave the state for college; his father the first to go, period, thanks to Uncle Sam. And even then, Ben hadn’t known anything about anything. When Veronica Corbin, his beautiful Phi Beta Ronnie, had said yes, she’d marry him but only after she finished business school, he’d thought she meant secretarial training.
    She was the smartest woman, hell, the smartest person he had ever met. Oh, Ronnie, he’d said. I know you can do more than that.
    Ben started up the golf cart and backed down the drive. One of The Commons’ thousand groundskeepers stood jumpsuited across the way, pruning. Ben waved. Call it the mark of a decent man: to look straight at the people your money meant you could look away from.
    The other man kept working. What he must think of the lot of them. Everything you could desire, for sale and self-contained. Ben’s son, Stephen, once had an assignment like that, a frog he’d had to keep alive for grade school. Think of its needs and how to keep them in balance. Seal its terrarium and see what happens.
    It wouldn’t have been grade school though. Nor middle. If it had been he’d have remembered Tara with a frog, too.
    Down the street a car approached, breaking through the heat shimmers. An actual car. You didn’t see that much; once they got over feeling like fools on a parade float, people here liked zipping around in their carts. Ben slowed to let the car pass. It stopped, its window opening with a brief puff of chilled air.
    â€œBenjamin! Off to practice on the sly?” Sadie Birnam was his standing Thursday golf date. She had a capable, elegant swing, and though she could best him, easily, from the advanced tees, she always set up at the ladies’. When he’d joked—tentatively, because they’d never talked politics—about women’s lib, she’d shut him down. She’d been teeing up at the ladies’ forever. If she changed her standard at this late date, she would have no proper measure of her lifetime progress.
    Ben raised his hands in a show of innocence. “Wouldn’t take a swing without you. Just headed across the way. Need anything?” Sadie didn’t seem the helpless widow sort, but with Gary gone—last Founder’s Day, his heart, no warning, there but for the grace of fruits and veggies—Ben did his best to be solicitous. He’d always been an early riser and had fallen into the habit of walking a mile or so each morning with the Birnams. The morning after Gary’s funeral he’d shown up as usual because he reckoned Sadie could use the company.
    Sadie shook her head. “I stocked up last week. My