The screwdriver slipped from Peter Calder’s hand and clattered across the porch boards.
It was a small sound, barely anything, metal against old wood in the morning heat.
But later, Peter would remember it as the sound before everything changed.
He had been trying to fix the loose hinge on his front door since 8:12 that Saturday morning.
The job should have taken ten minutes.
The screws were right there in a coffee can beside his knee.
The drill battery was charged.
The hinge was not even badly bent.
Still, he kept stopping, staring at the door, then staring past the porch railing toward the mailbox and the quiet street beyond it.
The air smelled like warm lumber, cut grass, and coffee gone cold in a paper cup near his boot.
