“You know, I think we should go check on Mary,” Alice said.

Joseph turned to look at her. A thick silence crept in through a crack in the window, like a cold draft under a doorway. A pressure behind her eye ached.

He eventually asked: “Why?”

“I talked to her,” she started to say, and then remembered she would be better off not mentioning the conversation she just had, because the entire thing had taken place inside of her brain. “Recently.”

“We really have to pick up your medication before the pharmacy closes,” he reminded her.

She looked behind him, out the window and towards the sun. “It’s not like we’re short on time.”