Page 85 of Roadrunner

“The day will come,” Riley said. “And, I’ll just know.”

“I could help,” Arthur said. “When it’s time. If you wanted.”

“Maybe,” Riley said. Not a yes. Not a no. The careful nothing of a man protecting something he wasn’t ready to say out loud, even to himself.

Price made a sound from the corner. It might have been a laugh. It was hard to say with Price.

Arthur went quiet, like maybe was still an answer worth having, and let it go the way he let go of most things that weren’t his to push.

He looked, in that moment, so specifically like the man across from him that I had to set my coffee cup down and look at the wall.

Della was looking at the wall too.

Then she looked at Arthur.

Then she looked at her hands in her lap.

Then she looked at me.

I held her gaze.

Neither of us said anything.

We didn’t need to.

The following Sunday, dinner was over and the table mostly cleared, and I was in the kitchen with Della starting on the dishes when it happened.

Arthur had drifted into the living room the way he did most Sundays once the plates came up, folded onto the end of Della’s sofa with one leg tucked under him, flipping through a comic book he’d brought from home. On the low table in front of him sat the little cluster of ceramic animals Della had collected over the years and kept there without ever explaining why. A handful of small desert figures, none of them worth a second look. He picked one up without paying it much attention, turning it over once in his hand while his eyes stayed on the comic.

Then he set it back down.

And picked it up again with his toes.

Della made a sound.

Not a word. Not a sentence. A sound. Sharp and small and involuntary, the kind that escapes before you can decide whether to let it.

Her hand went to her mouth.

I stood with the spoon in my hand and looked through the doorway at Arthur, completely unaware of either of us, turning the little figurine over with his toes with the casual ease of someone doing something they’ve always done.

The room was very quiet.

Della’s eyes went to me. I made myself hold them.

Her hand was still at her mouth. Her eyes were bright and doing something complicated and she was looking at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before. Not in four years of Sunday dinners and backyard evenings and every version of love she’d ever offered me.

This was something different.

Her eyes went from Arthur to me, and I set the spoon down on the counter.

Neither of us moved.

Arthur set the figurine back on the coffee table. He looked up toward the kitchen doorway. He sensed something. He was perceptive. He’d spent his whole life reading rooms.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.