Page 69 of A Future To Remember

“You can’t sleep here,” he repeated, this time nervously while he looked me up and down.

I’m an inch or two over six-feet and one-eighty. He came close to me in height but not in physique—even with my recent weight loss—so I could see why I made him nervous. “I wasn’t sleeping,” I said. He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “I hear ya, buddy. Just gonna gas her up, grab some coffee, and go, okay?”

The guy nodded, and without a word, he turned on his heel and headed back inside.

I fueled up the truck, then followed the path of the attendant and went inside for that cup of “jamocha,” as Abby likes to call it. She’d started slinging that one around a few weeks before we came to Montana.

Walking to the door, I smirked. She’d thought she was so clever combining “java” and “mocha” to form a word that was fun to say. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Arby’s had been offering a shake with that name for at least fifty years. Possibly longer. My mom used to get them as a summer treat when I was little.

Abby did that a lot, actually—inventing combinations of words to use as everyday slang.

I’d learned that that was yet another common trait among the neurodivergent. They loved to invent words based on the sensory stimulation they got when they said the word out loud. It’s why Edgar avoided certain sounds. She’d once told me she disliked words like “wreck,” “rural,” and “prescription” because of how they felt in her mouth. And don’t get me started on her annoyance with February. When forced to say it, she overenunciates the first R out of principle.

And she’d change other words that were softer. Like changing “really” to “rilly” and “very” to “vera.” My favorite was the time she and Oscar were working a case over in Hill Country—the area west of Austin—and Abs had traded “hillbilly” for “hillybubba.” Oscar’d had a field day with that one.

Walking inside, I stifled a chuckle. After pouring myself a cup of jamocha, I paused in the snack aisle to grab two packages of powdered doughnuts and made my way to the register. The attendant had pulled the hood of his sweatshirt away from his head and stared at me curiously while I laid out the goodies.

“You okay to drive?” he asked.

“Me?”

He nodded.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shrugged and motioned with his chin toward the truck. “If you’re tired, you can park around back and catch some z’s. I just can’t let you park at the pump longer than it takes you to pump some gas.”

I grimaced. The guy looked like he felt bad for knocking on my window.

“I appreciate it, but I wasn’t sleeping. I was…” A wave of emotion caught me off guard. “I was missing my wife, and I just needed a minute to get it together.”

It was his turn to grimace. “Oh, shit, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I know you’re just doing your job. It’s cool.”

As I reached for my wallet, he asked, “Was it cancer?”

I took a deep breath. Part of me didn’t want to get into it with him, and simply saying yes would avoid any further discussion, but I bit back that reply and told him the truth. “No. She was abducted six months ago, and I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew round and wide. “For real?”

I nodded and laid three twenties on the counter. And then I took out my phone and pulled up the screen saver with my favorite photo of her in the Adirondack chair.

He stared at the photo for a long couple of seconds.

Too long.

A jolt went through me. “You’ve seen her,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

He licked his lips, and his gaze darted from the screen to me and then back again. “Nah,” he said unconvincingly. “I mean, I thought for a second she looked familiar, but I don’t know her.”

I didn’t move either the phone or my gaze, even after he placed my change on the counter. “Have a nice day,” he muttered.

Behind me, the bell above the door jangled, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught someone come in and step up behind me in line.

The attendant glanced nervously at me again. “I gotta help the next person,” he said.

“That’s unfortunate because I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where you’ve seen my wife.”