They moved here just a couple of years ago. I know that along with missing old friends it can take awhile to feel truly rooted in a new town, both at work and within the community; having school-age kids does help, and a church community, definitely. I’m glad they’re part of ours.

Good friends of theirs where they’d come here from made the news in the last week or so when they didn’t show up where they were supposed to and concerned family called 911: one of the gas appliances had leaked carbon monoxide into the house and they had been overcome too quickly to get out.

Their old friends were abruptly gone from this earth. It was one of those things that just was and was just unfathomable all at the same time. It hit home for me because that was so nearly us too this past November.

Neither of us said anything about that to the husband as he stood in the doorway tonight quite surprised at the chocolate torte he had certainly not been expecting to find in his hands of a random evening. It simply was their turn to have a grownup version of a doorbell ditching. You should have seen the delighted anticipation in his face as he looked at all that beautiful chocolate he was about to share with his kids and his wife when she got home.

It was what we could quietly do.