Thomas mopped around the house all morning waiting for his wife to announce his departure from their home. At ten o’clock Mary drove Thomas to his mother’s house. She handed him a plastic garbage bag full of clothes she had bought for him at Goodwill and told him to give the clothes to his mother. She wished him luck without leaving the car, then drove away. He stood at the curb and watched sadly as she cruised out of his life. Thomas walked up the crumbly old cement sidewalk to his mother’s house alone and rang the bell.
Thomas never noticed the dark suited man in the unobtrusive grey sedan parked half a block away.
The undistinguished man sat in the driver’s seat of his car, pretending to read the local newspaper.
