"I know, Jan." He rubbed his face. He looked suddenly very tired, the lines around his mouth dug in deep. "I'll fix it this weekend. I'll get a deadbolt at the hardware store on Saturday and I'll put it in. Okay?"
They finished eating in silence. Milo came in from the hall and sat on the linoleum between their chairs and looked at Del, and then at Janet, and then he got up and walked to the door to the garage and sat in front of it, his tail flicking.
Neither of them said anything about it.
That night, when they went to bed, Janet watched Del go to the front door and check the lock, and then the back door, and then the door to the garage. He stood at the garage door with his hand on the knob for a long moment. Then he opened it and looked out into the dark garage and closed it again and turned the little button lock in the knob, which he never did, because the garage was the garage and nobody ever locked the door to the garage from the inside.
He came to bed and lay down on his back with his hands folded on his stomach and closed his eyes.
"Del?"
"Mm."
"Do you think somebody's been in the garage?"
He was quiet for so long she thought he'd already gone under. Then he said, very softly, "I don't know."
It was the most honest thing he'd said to her in a month. She lay awake turning it over in her hands.
* * *
The gas man came Wednesday at eleven-forty, which Janet supposed counted as between eight and noon.
He was a heavy, cheerful man named Ollie with a gray crew cut and a toolbox the size of a suitcase, and he went through the house with a little handheld meter that clicked and whined, holding it up to the furnace, the water heater, the pipe joints, the vents.
"Pretty as a picture," he said. "Old, but pretty. Somebody's been keeping this clean."
"My husband."
"Well, he knows what he's doing." Ollie straightened, his knees cracking like kindling. "No leak. Nothing. Water heater's fine, flue's drawing good. You folks are tight as a drum."
"I keep smelling something," Janet said. "In the hall."