Page 81 of Roadrunner

“I know,” Arthur said.

Riley almost smiled. He drank his water. He didn’t ask to see the page.

In the afternoon they put the bed frame together. Arthur held the long bolt. Riley did not take it out of his hand and do it faster. He waited. The bolt went in crooked the first time. Arthur backed it out and started over. Riley watched the mountains through the window until the second try caught.

“There,” Arthur said.

“There,” Riley agreed.

That was the conversation.

Riley left before dinner. I walked him as far as the driveway.

My SUV sat on one side. His truck on the other.

“Sunday. Mom’s cooking.” He paused. “You don’t have to.”

“We’ll come.”

He nodded. He looked at the house once, the way a man looks at a job that is not finished and does not need to be finished at that instant.

“He’s a good kid,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He got in the truck. I went inside.

Arthur was at the table with the notebook. Martina was making something that smelled like home and cumin.

“He’s coming Sunday?” Arthur asked, without looking up.

He’d obviously been listening.

“We’re going there,” I said.

He made a small mark on the page. Filed it. The way he filed outlets.

I sat down across from him and ate a grape that had not traveled as well as Martina promised.

Nothing else happened that day. That was the point of it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Alex

Now

Della cried.

Not immediately. She held herself together through the front door and through the hallway and through the kitchen and it wasn’t until she had both arms around me in the middle of her living room that she let go. Two or three seconds of it. Quiet and controlled, the way Della did everything.

Then she stepped back and held my face in both hands.

She looked at me for a long time.

“You look exactly the same,” she said.

“I don’t,” I said.