Just a brief bit:
In less than a minute the man in the grey coat jerks to attention, sweeps a dishrag gaze down the back work counter and settles on the toaster. He sees the shine of electrical tape on its cord, the veil of grease on its chrome. With the scent of burning toast he is a small boy shivering in the ghost of a winter morning, listening to the shuffle of his mother's slippers on the kitchen floor as she moves between table and stove, refrigerator and toaster. And the deadly quiet that surrounds her in that room that is the beefy, mean-browed coalminer she'd married after her husband died.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology