Chapter 7: Dean's POV

Dean's POV

She did ask me, in the end.

"What do you want?" Di said, with her arms folded and her face turned toward the road.

"A day," I said.

"One day at a time, with no promises, and you can tell me to stop."

She got into her car without a word.

I stood in the lot of my father's clubhouse in my shirtsleeves, with my cut on a table inside, and watched her taillights go.

I slept in my truck behind the bike shop.

At six in the morning I drove to the cemetery behind the Methodist church.

The gate was unlocked, and there was frost on the grass.

Wyatt's stone was small and gray, with a train carved at the top.

He had loved trains more than bikes, and I had never told my father that.

I knelt in front of it.

I had come here on the first Sunday of every month for twenty-two months, and I had never once knelt.

"Hey, buddy," I said.

Nothing answered.

There were fresh yellow chrysanthemums in the little steel vase.

Di had been here before me, and not long before.

I rubbed the name on the stone with my thumb.

"I did something stupid, bud," I said.

"I did it for a long time, and I told myself it was a way to keep going."

I didn't say the rest.

I never did, not out loud, not to him, not to her.

I stayed until the sun came over the church roof, and then I drove across town to Pine Street.

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