Page 33 of Sprog
"Yeah."
"Can I have the party at the clubhouse?"
I look at him. "I thought your homework was in the bag."
"It is. Can I have the party at the clubhouse?"
"I'll think about it."
He nods like this means yes, because for him it does mean yes and we both know it. He walks toward his friends and is absorbed into a group of eight-year-olds before he's crossed the yard, and I lean against the bike and watch him go and feel the particular mix of things I always feel watching EJ walk away from me. Pride, worry and something that's just love, specific and unglamorous but still a permanent fixture in my chest.
I drive back through town slowly.
I know Savannah's back. Brick told me three weeks ago, delivery kept deliberately flat, watching my face while he did it. The new doctor on the corner of Lincoln and Lexington. The building she's been setting up. I've driven past it twice without meaning to and both times I've sped up when I got close enough to see the lights on inside.
The town is small enough that I could have run into her already. I haven't. Either she's been lucky or she's been careful, and knowing Savannah it's both. She'll have clocked that the garage is on this side of town and she'll have her routes plannedaccordingly. She was always practical like that, always three steps ahead of the logistics of a situation. It was one of the things that made her good at medicine before she even started training for it.
I don't know what I'm afraid of.
That's a lie.
I know exactly what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of seeing her and finding out that ten years hasn't done what I need it to have done, and all the things I've built since she left are going to look smaller somehow, measured against what I walked away from.
I'm afraid she won't look at me at all.
I'm afraid she will.
I drive past the corner of Lincoln and Lexington without slowing down and head back to the garage.
"Isit your turn for Ruby's?" I ask Brick at noon.
He tries the face that means he's got something else to do, which he always tries and which never works on me because I've known that face since I was eleven years old. "Yeah, alright. Your usual?"
"Club sandwich and a strawberry milkshake."
He gives me the finger without looking up from the engine he's working on and heads out. He's been going to Ruby's more than usual since Savannah opened her practice. I haven't saidanything about this because saying something would make it a thing and I don't want it to be a thing.
He comes back forty minutes later with the food, which is twenty minutes longer than it takes to walk to Ruby's and back, and he sits down across from me and hands over the sandwich without making eye contact.
"Anything interesting at Ruby's?" I ask.
"No, not really."
"Brick."
He chews his sandwich. "She might have mentioned that the new doctor is almost open. End of the week apparently."
"Good," I say. "I'm sick of customers telling me they can't get into Dr. Foster."
"Yeah." He takes a drink. "We'll still use Foster though. He's looked after us in the worst situations. Our loyalty stays there."
He says it looking right at me. I hear what he means underneath what he says, which is something about not going to the new doctor's office on the corner of Lincoln and Lexington. For any reason whatsoever until I've got my head sorted. I nod and eat my sandwich and say nothing.
Brick stands and goes back to work. I finish my lunch and do the same.
I think about Savannah exactly once more for the rest of the afternoon, and then I get under a truck so I won't think about anything except what's wrong with the exhaust manifold.
Three weeks later,Prez calls Church.
