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It made him feel sad.
He got back into the Wrangler.
What now?
He had no idea.
It occurred to him that he should’ve asked the barkeep if he’d seen Baridon lately. Evan didn’t particularly want to hang around Blessing to try again.
Maybe it was fate.
Or whatever passed for fate.
Whipping the Jeep around turned up the volume on the ache in his left shoulder, but he didn’t care. He sped back up the narrowdirt road. No nearby homes, no neighbors. He wondered what kind of man would live like this.
Spotting an approaching truck, he veered to the shoulder and slowed. It got closer.
An ancient Ford F-150, chipped dark blue paint, rust over the wheel wells.
The driver didn’t slow and didn’t look over.
Through a dust-clouded window, Evan caught a flash of whiskered cheek.
He pulled over and watched in the rearview.
The truck didn’t turn on the sole fork in the road behind Evan but continued on straight for the house.
There was nowhere else the man could be headed.
Evan remained staring ahead at the road back to Eden, the Jeep idling roughly.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there.
But then his hands were spinning the wheel for a U-turn, his foot on the gas, everything moving with that same fated inexorability he’d felt before.
He drove back.
Sure enough the empty truck was parked on a slant in front of the double-wide. No signs of life through the functional windows.
Evan parked and climbed out once more. His shadow lay across the hard, flat earth, and as he turned for the house, it pulled back beneath his boots, swallowed up.
He felt numb, not entirely present and yet fully aware.
The splintered planks of the porch creaked under his weight.
He gathered himself.
And he knocked.
