Page 151 of Roadrunner

Jay walked back toward the food. The plate looked light in his hand. The work had not been.

Arthur was still at the hood. Palm flat on paint that had been junk under a tarp and was not junk any longer. He did not look at me this time. He did not need to. The nod had already happened.

Riley had not moved from the building.

I crossed the lot again.

Not for a speech. I used the words I had. The scrape. The Jeep.

I put my hand on the fender where the old damage used to live and felt only metal that had been given a second job.

He had started the calls while it was still in California, sitting under a tarp looking like something I loved that would not run.

I did not ask him why.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

The family is back together was not a sentence anymore. It was a parking lot. A boy at a hood. A man who had called twice a week about a frame that was not magic.

I got in the Jeep.

The seat knew my shape.

I put both hands on the wheel and let them stay there until they stopped announcing themselves.

Then I waited for my family to get in so we could go home.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Alex

Now

The clubhouse had mostly emptied by the time we drove home, Arthur asleep against the passenger window before we’d even reached the highway, worn out the specific way boys get worn out from a day spent being happy rather than busy.

Riley carried him in. I followed with the leftover plate Della had forced on us at the door, and by the time I came back downstairs he was on the back porch already with his boots off, looking at nothing in particular the way he did on nights that had asked something of him.

I sat down beside him.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He turned to face me. “Good day.”

“You called Jay twice a week for four months,” I said. “Before we were even engaged.”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Somebody told you that,” he said finally.

“Jay told me that.”

“Jay talks too much,” he said, but there was no heat in it. Just the embarrassment of a man caught being kinder than he’d meant anyone to notice.

“Why didn’t you say anything,” I asked. “All those months. You could have told me you were doing it.”

“I didn’t know yet if it would matter to you the way I hoped it would,” he said. “Didn’t want to give you something and watch you be polite about it. Easier to just do the thing quietly and let it land or not land on its own.” He looked at me. “It landed.”