Page 156 of Roadrunner

He held my gaze with the directness that was entirely his own.

Della found out the way Della found out everything, which was almost instantly and through some channel nobody could ever quite identify.

She called before we’d told her.

“I’m not going to ask how you know,” I said, answering the phone.

“Good,” she said. “Because I’m not going to tell you.” A pause, and then her voice cracked slightly, unguarded in a way Della rarely allowed herself to be over the phone. “A grandbaby, Alex. A whole new one. I get to do this from the very beginning this time.”

“You get to do all of it,” I said. “Bottles. Diapers. The works.”

“I would crawl through glass for the diapers,” she said, with complete sincerity. “You have no idea what you’re offering me.”

I laughed, and she laughed, and for a moment neither of us said anything else, just held the phone and let the joy of it sit there uncomplicated, which was, I was learning, its own kind of luxury after so many years of complicated joys.

“I don’t care what it is,” she said eventually. “Boy, girl, doesn’t matter one bit. I just want to hold it and spoil it and give it back to you when it cries.” A pause, softer. “Antonio would have loved this so much he wouldn’t have been able to stand it.”

“I know,” I said.

“You tell that baby about him,” Della said. “Whichever one it turns out to be. You make sure it knows there was a man who would have adored it before it ever took a single breath.”

“I will,” I said, and meant it completely.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Alex

Now

The email came on a Tuesday.

Subject line in the kind of calm that is never actually calm.

Could we meet tomorrow after school. Nothing urgent. Wanted to touch base regarding Arthur.

Nothing urgent was how people said urgent when they didn’t want you to arrive already armed.

Riley read it over my shoulder.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

Not a question.

“I’ve got a service call at two,” he said. “I’ll move it.”

He moved it.

The classroom smelled like dry-erase markers and the ghost of a hundred sack lunches.

Mrs. Keene was younger than I expected. Soft voice. A cardigan that had given up arguing with the desert.

She looked at me when we sat down.

Then at Riley.

Then back at me, like the second chair was a courtesy.

“Thank you both for coming,” she said. “Arthur is a bright boy. Truly. He’s settled in better than most kids who transfer mid-year.”