The old woman moved through the house soundlessly, like a shadow. She put the kettle on, cleared the plates, adjusted the pillows. Her movements had the automatism of a robot whose logic board had burned out but whose motor functions remained. She had no one left. Her husband died in the war forty years ago. Her son died in some alleyway. And now she had two stranger girls and a white antenna dish on the roof, looking at the sky where no one answered
