Page 112 of The Grumpy Defenseman

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I drove south with the windows down for the first hour.

Ranger slept. The sun worked its way west across the rear window. Texas gave me pastures, billboards, pump jacks, and the flatness it only gave at dusk. I did not turn on the radio.

I did not need to.

Somewhere outside Waco, my phone lit up.

Sam: You stopped?

I pulled off at the next exit. Sat in the parking lot of a gas station with my truck running, Ranger on the seat beside me, and the light dying over the fields across the access road.

Me: Clearfield. Cemetery. My mom’s house. Heading back now.

Three dots. A long pause. The dots came back.

Sam: Oh.

Just that.

She knew where Clearfield was. I had told her at Paramour in one of the long conversations after the second drink, and she had filed it the way she filed everything.

Me: Can I see you tomorrow?

Sam: Yes.

Me: I’ll pick you up atseven.

Sam: Okay.

I set the phone down. Put the truck back in gear. Pulled onto the highway with the windows still down and Ranger shifting in his sleep on the seat beside me.

There was nothing ahead of me that felt like an obligation. For the first time since I had signed a contract at seventeen, the road I was on was one I had chosen because I had decided where it went.

I drove the last hour into the San Antonio skyline with both hands on the wheel, Ranger asleep beside me, and the shape of tomorrow in my head.

Not forgiveness.

Direction.

And the rest would wait until morning.

Evan

Ipicked her up at seven.

She stood outside her building, arms crossed, clearly watching for my truck.

Which meant she had been thinking about this too.

I pulled to the curb. She opened the passenger door and climbed in without asking where we were going.

That trustlanded hard.

Not blind trust. Sam did not do blind. This was the harder kind. The kind that knew the cost and still got in the truck.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

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