My Tow Driver Found Me at 2 A.M., and Home Could Wait novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bunk Room

She wakes on the shop cot to a $2,850 estimate she can't put on the joint card, turns off her location sharing, takes leave from her job, and sets three rules in the shower doorway.

I woke on a cot with a wool blanket scratching my chin and a man in the doorway holding a mug.

He was old and thin and stooped, with a white buzz cut and suspenders over a gray work shirt.

"Morning, miss," he said. "I'm Orlin. This is my shop."

I sat up too fast and pulled the blanket to my collarbone.

I was wearing my jeans and the hoodie, and over the back of the chair hung Levi's Carhartt.

"Coffee," Orlin said, and set the mug on the milk crate by the cot. "Company's covering you. We've got a rescue fund for stranded folks. Nothing to sign."

"That's kind of you."

"It's not kind, it's policy," he said flatly.

His eyes went to my left hand on the blanket.

The ring was back on.

I had put it on at the shop sink at four in the morning, with the tap running, while Levi stood at the other end of the garage and didn't look.

Orlin looked at the ring, and then at the wall.

"Eggs in ten minutes," he said, and he went out and shut the door behind him with a hand that was careful about it.

He said nothing at all.

I sat there with the coffee and thought: he knows.

When I came out, the Camry sat in the lot with its hood up.

Inside the garage, a whiteboard by the office door had my plate number on it in green marker, and under it, in a square hand, *Trans rebuild, Hillsboro, $2,850.*

I stood and looked at the number for a while.

I had $212.

The only way to pay it was the joint card, and the joint card went to Kent's inbox.

If I put a transmission on it, he would ask what happened.

Then he would drive over Saturday with a thermos to help me with the closets.

So I let the fund stand.

I told myself I would sort it out in a month.

I stood at the end of the lot and did the other things, one at a time, with my thumbs.

I turned off location sharing.

I emailed the Hays practice and asked for four weeks of unpaid leave starting Monday, to clear my mother's house, which was true.

Then I texted Kent that I'd be home Thursday nights and back at the house Fridays.

A thumbs-up came back, and nothing else.

I looked at the little yellow thumb for a long time.

Levi came out of the office with a plate.

He had showered.

His crew cut was still wet and he wore a clean gray T-shirt, and the plate held three eggs and toast.

"Eat," he said.

I ate standing up, and he leaned on the wrecker with his arms crossed and watched me do it.

There was a smear of grease on my cheek, I found out, because he reached out and wiped it with his thumb.

"Don't," I said.

He took his thumb back at once.

I put my fork down.

I took hold of his wrist, and I turned his hand over and looked at it.

The palm was cut and callused.

There was a white shiny burn scar across the heel of it, as wide as a quarter, and three healing nicks along the fingers.

I put my thumb on the burn.

I felt his pulse knock once under my fingers, hard.

He did not pull away, and he did not say anything.

"What's this?" I said.

"Exhaust. Two winters ago."

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"Only when it's cold."

I nearly laughed.

It was the same lie he had told about the keys, and he knew it, and I knew it.

I let go.

I said what I had been planning at the sink.

"I have rules."

He straightened.

"Go ahead."

I walked back inside, to where the bunk room door gave onto a shower stall the size of a closet.

I turned around in its doorway so there was a concrete step between us.

"One. No nice until after," I said. "I don't want to be asked how I am in the middle. If I want it stopped, I'll say so."

"Yes," Levi said.

"Two," I said. "Nobody asks me about my husband or Hays. Not you, not him. I won't talk about it."

"Yes."

"Three. Nobody in Marion knows. Not your friends, not the church."

"Orlin," Levi said.

"He saw the ring."

"He won't say a word." He shrugged one shoulder. "He'll feed you, though. He can't help it."

"Then three is almost three."

"Yes," Levi said.

He said it each time the same way, and he didn't argue, and that made me want to.

I wanted him to say that's a stupid rule.

I wanted him to push on it.

He stood there with his arms loose and his eyes on me and gave me everything I asked for.

I put my hand flat on the door frame, because my knees felt strange.

Orlin's pickup rattled out of the lot.

I slept the rest of the day in the bunk room with his jacket under my cheek.

At eleven that night someone knocked, twice, and Levi spoke through the wood.

"Truck 2 got a call. Pickup in a ditch on Old Mill Road."

"Okay," I said.

"Come ride with me."

I looked at the ceiling.

I should have said no.

I had said no to nobody in two days that I meant to say it to.

I put on his jacket and opened the door.

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