Page 69 of The Broken Hearts Club

“Well, then he has to come back to San Francisco with you.”

“I know. But first, we need to help Jeannie get through the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll talk to her. She doesn’t want Collie to give up on his dreams any more than I do, so maybe the two of us can think of a way to convince him.”

“Okay, good. Do you need me to cover for you at work while you’re off in the land of potatoes?”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s what Idaho is known for.”

“That’s news to me. And thanks for offering, but I don’t need you to cover for me. I’m going to be working while I’m here, since I already took time off while Collie was in the hospital. Hopefully no one will mind if I do the next couple of Friday meetings as Zoom calls.”

“That’ll probably be fine, but you shouldn’t stay away too long. The animation department is wrapping up their current game, so the one you’ve been working on is moving closer to production. That means they’ll need all hands on deck pretty soon.”

“I know. I figure two weeks is the longest I can stay here.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, and after the call ended, I climbed back into the van. That ended up waking Collie, who sat up and mumbled, “What time is it?”

“A little after two.”

“We should get going.”

We left Boise and headed northwest. After a while, rolling foothills gave way to open farmland. When we’d traveled about forty miles, Collie told me to turn off the highway onto a two-lane country road.

We passed two tiny towns, one every ten miles or so, before a sign appeared welcoming us to Hickson, population eighteen hundred forty-six. “I almost vandalized that sign when I left,” Collie muttered. “I wanted to take a Sharpie to it and change the number to eighteen forty-five. I guess it’s good that I didn’t.”

Once we were in the main part of town, Collie said, “I’ll give you the grand tour. Turn left here.”

We ended up in what was once the downtown shopping district. The buildings looked like they dated from the late eighteen-hundreds, and they’d probably been beautiful back in the day. Now they were faded and shabby. Almost all of the storefronts were dark, with big “for lease” signs in the windows.

When we were halfway down the block, he said, “Hold up here for a minute.” There wasn’t another car in sight, so I stopped in the middle of the street.

Collie pointed at a boarded up hardware store. “That was Aunt Sue’s business. She inherited it from her dad and ran it as a one-woman show. She was barely scraping by after one of those huge chain hardware stores opened in the county seat, but she wouldn’t give up on it—not until her symptoms started to get the better of her.” He tilted his head to look at the second floor. “We lived in the apartment above it.”

I looked up at the curtained windows and asked, “How long did you live there?”

“From the time I was ten until the day I moved to San Francisco.”

I couldn’t imagine that. It must have been like growing up in a ghost town.

Next, we drove to a shopping center that was about half a mile away. Collie gestured with a flourish. “I present to you the pinnacle of our culinary scene, the Chicken Bucket. And across the street is the thrift shop where I used to work.”

“Do you want to stop at either of them?”

“I really don’t.”

“Where to next?”

“I guess that’s it for the tour, so let’s go to Jeannie’s house. She probably isn’t home yet, but I want to get things ready for her.”

“How’s she getting home from the hospital?”

“Dwight is picking her up in her minivan. I offered, but she said this made more sense since it was in his garage. My theory is that they wanted to see each other again and are using this as an excuse.”

“How are we going to get in?”

“I have a key,” he said, “but it’s usually unlocked.”

He told me to turn left, and we made our way through a quiet, working class neighborhood. Some of the houses looked like they dated from the sixties or seventies, while others were a lot older.