Page 162 of Across His Line

“That wasn’t convincing,” he says.

I put my hat on.

“I’m fine,” I say.

I don’t know if I’m okay, but I’m going, and I’m going because I decided to, not because anybody told me to.

He looks at me for one more second. Then he nods, like that’s an answer he accepts, and picks up the bag.

In the garage, he digs through a bin in the corner and comes out with a pair of white figure skates, old ones, with the laces gone gray.

“My mom’s,” he says. “She’s a size up from you, probably. Wear two pairs of socks.”

I look at them. “Oh.” I blink. He knows what size my feet are? “I don’t know how to skate.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. He just puts them in the back of the car.

We drive to town, and I don’t remember Lucas Palinski living in the middle of town.

“Where are we going?”

“Goodwill.”

I turn in my seat. He’s driving with one hand at the top of the wheel, looking straight ahead.

“Why?”

“Told you I’d take you. We have time.”

I sit back in my seat and look out the window at the gray strip malls going by, and I don’t say anything because I don’t trust what my voice will do.

The Goodwill is the same as every Goodwill. That’s what I love about them. Bright lights, the smell of dust and old detergent, a woman at the register with reading glasses on a beaded chain, and somewhere in the back a cart with a squeaky wheel. I grab a basket by the door out of habit, and Rafe takes it out of my hand without asking and carries it behind me. I let him because I’m already looking at the racks.

Then I’m aware of him the whole time, and it’s terrible.

I’m usually fast. I go down a rack the way you’d read a page, eyes moving, hands moving, pulling a hanger out an inch and letting it go, pulling the next. But I can feel him behind me, a step back, filling up the aisle, and suddenly I’m second-guessing everything. I pull a shirt and put it back. I pull it again, check the tag, and put it back again because I already knew. My face is hot. He’s not saying anything. He’s just standing there with my basket in his hand, watching me do it.

“What are you looking for?” he says finally.

“Tags, mostly.” I pull a hanger and show him the inside of a collar. “This one’s new. Made overseas, cheap blend, nobody wants it. I want old ones. Made in USA. Single stitch on the sleeves and the hem, see?” I find one and turn the cuff toward him so he can see the single line of thread. “That usually means it’s from before the late nineties.”

He leans in and looks at it, frowning a little. “And that’s worth more.”

“Sometimes. If it’s in good shape. If somebody wants it.” I check the armpits, the collar, the hem, and find a hole the size of a pencil eraser near the seam. “This one has a hole. So no.”

“It’s a tiny hole.”

“Buyers find tiny holes.”

I go through two racks of T-shirts and one of sweatshirts. I check maybe a hundred things. I pull out six and put four back. The two I keep are a gray Russell crewneck from a state college, made in USA, the cuffs still tight, six ninety-nine, and a faded single-stitch T-shirt from a 1994 fishing derby with a cartoon bass on the front holding a trophy, four ninety-nine. I stand in the aisle with my phone and pull up the sold listings for both, and Rafe comes and stands right next to me to see the screen, close enough that his shoulder is touching mine through both our coats. I forget, for a second, what I’m looking at.

“You looked at a hundred shirts and bought two,” he says.

I grin. “Yeah, that’s the game.”

He looks down at the fishing shirt in my hand. “What’s that one worth?”

“Thirty-five, maybe forty. Fishing stuff from the nineties does well. People like the ugly ones.”