the interview aftermath, E.R. — "I think of the Moms, alphabetizing…"

Ambulanced away, Hal's mind goes home, and home resolves into two objects. The Moms is caught mid-ritual, alphabetizing the soup cans over the microwave — the compulsive ordering of 002's plumb flight-lines domesticated into a pantry, love expressed as the imposition of sequence on inert things. And beside it, "Himself's umbrella hung by its handle from the edge of the mail table just inside the Headmaster's House's foyer" — the dead father's relic left hanging exactly where he left it, in the house his brother-in-law now runs as Headmaster. The two images are the family system in miniature: the still-ordering mother and the still-present dead father, both installed in the residence the successor has inherited. The ghost's umbrella waits in the usurper's front hall.