Chapter 15: Thirty Years

Boone's POV

I crossed the road before I decided to.

Gil was in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel and the engine off.

He didn't look at me when I opened the passenger door.

He didn't tell me to get out either.

I sat down and shut the door, and the two of us looked through the windshield at the cottage.

Diana stood on that crooked porch with her arms folded, and Dex was saying something that made her laugh.

"She picked the place herself," Gil said.

"I know."

"Eleven hundred dollars. She's been putting twenty bucks a week in a coffee can since July. I thought it was for a car."

"It was for this."

"I know that now."

A bus went by.

Thirty years ago this man pulled a drunk nineteen-year-old off a bar floor on Peach Street.

He put me in his truck and drove me home.

When my marriage ended, he came by with a bag of groceries.

He sat on my porch for three hours and said nothing.

That was the man in the driver's seat.

"I'll tell you the truth," I said, "and you can hit me after."

"I might."

"In July she came into the store in her scrubs."

Gil's jaw moved.

"She'd been crying in the car. She said hello and laughed at something I said."

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