Not metaphorically. He cleaned the guest bath until the second toothbrush memory had nowhere to hide. He washed the sheets Sondra had put on the bed, then remade it himself. He took Scout's bowls outside and scrubbed them in the driveway sun. He found a black hoodie in the laundry room that was not his and not Sondra's—too long in the arms—and he put it in a paper bag and set the bag by the door without ceremony.
Scout watched him from the rug, head tilted.
"I know," Reggie told the dog. "I'm doing the small things because the big thing doesn't have a mop."
He found, under the couch, a receipt from a diner on Route Nine dated two months back—two coffees, one slice of pie, paid in cash. He held it until the paper warmed, then put it in the kitchen trash without ceremony. Evidence was not wisdom. He already had more truth than he could metabolize.
Scout scratched at the back door. Reggie let him into the small yard and stood on the step watching the dog patrol the fence line, the same patrol he made every afternoon, as if loyalty were a route you could smell into permanence. The sky was clear. A neighbor's wind chime ticked. Reggie thought about how many ordinary afternoons Sondra had stood on this same step while he was replacing filters in houses no one lived in, and how the tall man might have stood here too, briefly, carefully, listening for engines.
Anger rose again, cleaner this time. Not the theatrical kind. The kind that wanted sleep and a future and did not know yet whether those two things included the same woman.
In the afternoon Cheryl came over with a bag of groceries and no announcement beyond a knock. She cooked chicken and greens. They ate on the couch with plates on their knees like teenagers. She did not ask for a status report. She asked if Scout still stole socks. She asked if Reggie remembered the summer their mother made them shell peas until their thumbs hurt. She made the house sound inhabited by history that was not only pain.
Over the greens Cheryl said, "You still love her?"
Reggie chewed, swallowed, stared at the blank television. "Love didn't leave the building when he walked through it. That's the problem. If love had left, this would be simpler. I'd pack. I'd go. I'd call a lawyer named something sharp. Instead I've got love and betrayal sitting on the same couch arguing about the thermostat."
"Welcome to adulthood," Cheryl said dryly. "No clean ledgers."
"Did you still love Anton when you left?"
Cheryl's fork paused. "Yes. I left anyway. Love wasn't the question. Safety and respect were. Your situation isn't mine, though. Don't borrow my ending just because I'm available as a cautionary tale."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm just trying to learn how people breathe after the air changes."
When she left, she hugged him hard. "Sunday's coming," she said. "You don't owe her a decision on the porch. You owe yourself a true sentence. Whatever it is."
After she was gone, Reggie took Scout for the long loop, past the model homes where his patch still meant something simple. The sales office lights were on. A young couple stood on the porch of the Oakridge model pointing at the trim color, imagining a life. Reggie walked past them with Scout and felt the strange envy of people who still thought houses were the hard part.
***