Page 55 of Roadrunner

My phone buzzed. Martina. Arthur wants pizza.

I typed back. Get him whatever he wants.

I put the phone in my pocket.

Then I thought, quietly and without intending to, about the desert. About blue mountains at dusk. About the particular sound of a Harley-Davidson engine running flat out across open ground.

About the parking lot. About nothing.

I wondered if he was single.

I decided there was no way he was.

I wondered anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Alex

Now

I was in the kitchen with coffee in hand when the call came through. Arthur was at school. Martina was somewhere in the back of the house. The morning was ordinary in the specific way that mornings had been ordinary since Joshua’s accident.

My phone lit up on the counter.

The Hospital.

I set my coffee down and answered.

“Mrs. MacAfee.” His voice was measured. Careful. “I wanted to call you personally. There have been some developments overnight.”

My hand tightened on the phone. “What kind of developments?”

“Positive ones,” he said.

I sat down.

“The intracranial pressure has decreased significantly since yesterday’s readings,” he said. “We’re seeing some brain activity that we weren’t seeing a week ago. It’s not dramatic, but it’s real and it’s measurable.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means there’s hope,” he said. “Real hope. Not the cautious kind I’ve been offering you.”

I stared at the kitchen table.

“I want to caution you,” he continued, “that improvement at this stage doesn’t guarantee full recovery. We don’t know what his cognitive function will look like if and when he regains consciousness.”

“But he might regain consciousness.”

“He might,” the doctor said. “Yes.”

I sat at the kitchen table for a long time after I hung up.

The coffee went cold. Outside, the neighborhood did what it did at nine in the morning on a Thursday. Unremarkable things. A dog somewhere. A leaf blower two houses down.

I should have felt relief.

I examined myself for it. Searched the way you search for something you’ve misplaced.