““Covered with snow on a clear day, the houses looked cheery and well cared for. They also looked empty. Dusty thought about empty houses in little towns like this all over the world, with men going and gone and no women left inside. Houses without housewives. No cooking and cleaning, no humming and apron-wearing wives and mothers like in the old sitcoms. No rushing minivans driven by lithe women in yoga pants whose children were well behaved and spoke Mandarin. No soap-opera-addicted, overweight, neglectful trailer trash with a dozen kids running around screaming, their mouths always stained with Kool-Aid. Every man in Huntsville remembered another life, expecting to come home every day to find someone there. All the empty houses sat. No one numbered the silent days.””
